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THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


THE FAITH OF THE CROSS 


BEING THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES DELIVERED 
AT THE GENERAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, 
NEW YORK, IN FEBRUARY, 1914 


BY 


Pitre Mercer RHINELANDER, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D. 
SOMETIME BISHOP OF PENNSYLVANIA 


Second Impression 


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NOV 1 U 1926 | 


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THINK OUT YOUR FAIT 






BY 


PHILIP MERCER RHINELANDER, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D. 
SOMETIME BISHOP OF PENNSYLVANIA 


LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
55 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C. 4 
TORONTO, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA AND MADRAS 


1926 





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IN LOVING MEMORY 
OF 
WALDEN MYER 
CANON OF WASHINGTON CATHEDRAL 
WHOSE LOYAL FRIENDSHIP AND UNDERSTANDING SYMPATHY 
FOR MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS 
HAVE BEEN A CONSTANT 
ENCOURAGEMENT 
AND STIMULUS 





PREFACE 


I 


ba this small book are gathered six papers 
and addresses written or delivered in the 
last few years at various times and under no less 
-varying circumstances. Yet all are closely 
joined, if not in exact logical sequence, at least 
in subject matter and in form of treatment. 
Here and there are repetitions. But none 
the less I think each of the six adds something 
to the other five, either by expanding what is 
elsewhere only lightly touched, or by laying 
foundations on which subsequent arguments 
may more securely rest. I say “subsequent,” 
for, as far as possible, the papers are printed 
in progressive order. 


II 


If apology is needed for putting into perma- 
nent form such small attempts to elucidate great 
questions, I would fall back with some con- 


Vii 


vill PREFACE 


fidence on the many friends who have seen 
something of enduring value in what is here 
set down. It also appears certainly true that 
the place and value of the Christian creed in 
and for the Christian life, is not a question 
safely left to scholars and philosophers. It 
vitally concerns every one who wants to be a 
Christian. It is intensely practical. Until 
its right solution has been found, no secure 
progress in discipleship can possibly be made. 
For the Church’s creed embodies, not the doubt- 
ful and ephemeral ideas of individual philoso- 
phers and theologians, but the central and 
cardinal convictions of the believing body as a 
whole. In every phrase and sentence of its 
creed, the age-long Christian fellowship of 
faith is to be heard calling across time and 
space to those who, as yet either unborn or 
unbelieving, are not included in its member- 
ship. Thus to throw light on the nature and 
meaning of this challenge of the creed is to do 
a real work in the simple propagation of the 
Gospel. 


PREFACE Ix 


Ill 


One more word in comment on the title of 
this book. I have cast the title in sentence 
form and have employed the second person. 
And this with a purpose and a hope. If the 
title is to be taken as much less than an imper- 
ative command, on the other hand it implies 
much more than an amiable suggestion. It 
is meant to imply a personal and a pastoral 
relation between the reader and the writer. 
The contents of this book are not mere private 
thoughts, cast out on the current of religious 
literature to take their chance. They had 
birth under pressure of pastoral responsibility. 
They were written, not only to meet definite 
occasions, but also to help and guide definite 
groups of men and women whom it was my 
privilege to serve: who had the right to look 
to me for help and guidance. For me this 
makes this book, small as it is, weighty with dear 
associations. And my chief satisfaction in its 
publication comes from the vivid memories 
which it recalls of my episcopate in Pennsyl- 
vania, and of my fellow-workers, friends and 
patient hearers there. They at least will 


x PREFACE 


understand my keen desire to retain the pas- 
toral note in what is here reiterated chiefly 
for their sake. I would still be a helper of their 
faith and a sharer of their joy and peace in 
believing. I would still feel, as in former days, 
that we are thinking out our common faith 
together. 


Puitriep M,. RHINELANDER. 


S. Bartholomew’s Day, 1926. 
Wasurneton, D. C., 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 
Il. THeroLocy AND EDUCATION 


Il. Creeps AND CHRISTIANITY 
Ill. Tut User or CREEDS . 
IV. Tue CREED AND THE MINISTRY 


V. Tue Nicene Creep To-pay 


VI. Tur WuHo.e CouNsEL oF Gop . 


74 


94 


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THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


I 
THEOLOGY AND EDUCATION* 


I 


] WOULD begin with a very simple parable. 
I would suggest for meditation an organist, 
seated on his bench, with the stops and keys 
before him, and the bellows working. Just 
what happens when he plays? Well, the 
organist seems to disappear, brushed clean 
away and swallowed up by the spirit of music 
awake and become vocal. The melodies, the 
interwoven harmonies, the swell and fall, the 
varying tones and qualities of sound, are there 
in their own right, by their own laws. No 
doubt the little man with his little hands and 
* Paper read at the one hundredth anniversary of the General 


Theological Seminary, on May 1, 1919, and subsequently printed 
in The American Church Monthly. 


g THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


feet has raised the curtain, has played the part 
of call-boy, but all the rest is music. The 
organist has disappeared. 

And yet, if he has disappeared, it is by his 
own act, or rather by his own art. Let him 
make a misstep upon his pedals or a slip by 
the smallest of his fingers, and he will come 
back upon you in his native and naked person- 
ality. There is no clearer instance of absolute 
and momentary control than that of an organ 
by an organist. It is a miracle of scientific 
and mechanical adjustment. Of ten thousand 
melodies, stored up in mind, or filed in manu- 
script, he has selected one. Of innumerable 
combinations of notes and tones he has chosen 
out his own. In the richest and loudest burst — 
of music only a few pipes speak. The great 
majority are silent. A few pounds of pres- 
sure, rightly distributed through a space of 
fifteen minutes, applied by the half ounce, 
now here, now there, will evoke (or shall we 
say educe?) a hero’s dead march or an angel’s 
song. But the hero would not have been 
carried to his grave, nor the angel sung his song, 
unless the organist had moved the stops and — 
pressed the keys. 


THEOLOGY AND EDUCATION 3 


II 


That is the parable. I freely admit its 
imperfections. And later I will come back 
to show just where it fails. But it will serve 
to point one truth, entirely self-evident, and 
yet usually overlooked and not seldom volumi- 
nously and vehemently denied, namely, that 
education is in the very nature of the case 
dogmatic. The sounds and notes are doubtless 
latent in the child. He must produce them. 
But there is always an organist or educator, 
who pulls or pushes as he wills. 

A colossal and convincing illustration is 
found in the Kaiser and the German people. 
Take the Kaiser, if you like, not as by Divine 
right a veritable music-master, but as merely 
an automatic organ-player. Figure the twenty 
army corps commanders and the battalions of 
subservient professors, as the composers of the 
melody and the writers of the score. Granted 
that they steered his hands and feet to the 
proper keys and pedals, arranged the crescendos 
and diminuendos, and set all the combinations; 
still the thing is clear, past the shadow of a 
question, that one man played upon a people’s 


4 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


soul and the 65,000,000 of them poured forth 
in answer their self-devoted and self-destructive 
chorus: “Deutschland, Deutschland uber 
alles!” 

The thing is so terrifically plain and evident, 
and it has taken place on such a portentous 
scale, that a great mass of very modern ped- 
agogy has been thrown into the scrap-heap 
overnight and a great many modern peda- 
gogues are seeking cover. For one cannot 
any longer talk about the free and uninflu- 
enced shooting forth of the innate ideas of chil- 
dren and get away with it. For all time the 
world, even the thoughtless world, will have 
before its eyes the great classical illustration 
of all history, of what education really is and 
to what extraordinary perfection its process 
can be brought. 


Tit 


My first point then is that education is dog- 
matic, in the very nature of the case. And I 
use the word deliberately in view of what is 
to follow later on in this discussion. In any 
case it is as good as any other word and perhaps 
better. For a dogma is nothing in the world 


THEOLOGY AND EDUCATION 5 


but an idea sufficiently clear in the mind to be 
defined, and sufficiently attractive to the 
heart to incite to propaganda. Dogma has 
no necessary religious connotation. A cook- 
book or a Liberty Loan circular is fairly teem- 
ing with it. Given an idea of any sort in 
actual process of transmission from mind to 
mind, and there is dogma at its work of edu- 
cation. There is no education otherwise. So 
far we can press our parable quite fearlessly. 
- The parents in the home, the nursery toys, the 
pictures.on the walls, the posters on the hoard- 
ings, are indeed educational, but they are 
educational simply because they are dogmatic. 
Some one has provided and prepared them: 
some one is pressing certain keys and pulling 
certain stops. 

In passing, let me point out another truth 
which springs immediately out of this and drives 
it home. Strictly speaking there are no wned- 
ucated people. Everyone really receives an 
equal amount of education. Those who can 
neither read nor write may be as much edu- 
cated, though in a different way and along a 
different line, as those who are thoroughly at 
home in fifty languages and literatures. What 


6 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


our common way of talking about this matter 
really means is that we have established certain 
standards: certain things which we have 
agreed to call right or wrong, cultured or bar- 
barous. These are the dogmas which we have 
determined to “put over” on the children; 
which are to evoke the harmonies or discords 
in the children’s lives. It may be pacifist 
dogma which will have no soldiers in the 
nursery. It may be “liberal”? dogma which, 
among other things, fervently believes that 
religious agnosticism is the proper and profitable 
spiritual state. In small groups or in large 
groups, the inevitable process is kept working. 
No one escapes or can escape from it. Every- 
body is always educating and being educated. 
And in this as in other cases the first are often 
last, and the last first. Fagin, the Jew in 
Dickens’ story, is as notable and efficient an 
educator as is President Butler of Columbia. 
Our streets are probably our most effective 
public schools. 
IV 

So far the parable of organist and organ. 
But now it fails us. For the organ will have 
to be a magic organ if we are to use it to repre- 


THEOLOGY AND EDUCATION 7 


sent a child. It must have the power to mul- 
tiply itself, to put forth new pipes and reeds 
of unimagined kind and quality. It must be 
able to keep on playing by itself and to make 
its own melodies and harmonies. It will not 
be altogether free. Always, or nearly always, it 
will be following out the impulse of the master 
who first drew sounds from it. Never, or 
scarcely ever, will it discover or recover the use 
of the notes and tones which he left silent. 
Always there will be some original capacity 
unused and useless. But still it will be miracu- 
lously self-determining and_ self-determined. 
For that is the reality of which the organist 
and organ are the type; that is the child, as 
he receives and completes his education. 

And just here is where theology comes in. 
It is really very simple. Neither dreams, nor 
fears, nor ghosts have made men theologians, 
but just the mysteries of their own self-conscious 
life. Theology is nothing but philosophy try- 
ing to do justice, not to some fragments, but 
to the whole of our experience. It is simply 
our true and brave insistence that there are 
answers to our deepest questions; that there 
is a key to the understanding even of the 


8 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


human heart. Faith in God is not, strictly 
speaking, the same thing as faithin man. But 
one can’t possibly have the last without the 
first. For God alone makes valid man’s expe- 
rience. Without God, men do not know at 
all who they are, or where they are, or what 
that should be at. That is why men seek 
after God, that they may believe in Him and 
therefore in themselves. 

Now quite clearly what happens to and in 
the child when he takes himself into his own 
hands, and voluntarily acts and reacts for or 
against the impulses which have been given 
him, will depend upon his philosophy of life. 
Again I deliberately use a long word because 
I want to rob it of its terrors and show it as 
a perfectly simple and every-day affair. A 
philosopher is simply one who views his own 
life as a whole. Everyone does that. Every- 
body has to doit. So everyone is a philosopher. 
We are not all the time in philosophic mood. 
A pregnant moment, an absorbing task, a 
keen emotion while it lasts, robs us of our phi- 
losophy. We live much of the time from hand 
to mouth; on trains and trolleys, in books 
and theatres. Life is one thing after another. 


THEOLOGY AND EDUCATION 9 


And yet it is all bound together with a domi- 
nating purpose, by a single will, towards a 
summum bonum. ““No man can serve two 
masters.” There may be breaks away from 
the main track. There may be pauses in back 
waters, sometimes even a stroke or two pulled , 
against thé current (as in Dear Brutus). But 
each is ruled by his philosophy; by his whole 
view of his whole life. 

And if God is not at work in our philosophy, 
then the God-like part of our nature will have 
no stimulus, will not be roused, will count for 
nothing. It will be a stop which has never 
been pulled out; a note which never has been 
sounded. I believe it is true that the hunting 
instinct of some breeds of dogs will die out of 
them if for a certain space after their birth 
they are kept from any use of it. And those 
who have patiently amassed the facts tell us 
the same story about children’s capacity for 
faith in God. If the religious instinct is left 
dormant up to the thirteenth or fourteenth 
year it is almost always permanently lost. 
How singularly blind, how scientifically fatu- 
ous, how intellectually self-deceived are they 
who make pretense of leaving it to children 


10 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


(their own or other people’s) to decide whether 
they will believe in God or no! Truly a child 
may give up his theology even after he has 
been taught it, just as he may give up music 
after he has made painful acquaintance with 
the scales, or Greek after he has read a book 
of Xenophon, or Hebrew after he has gone 
through six chapters out of Genesis. But, 
just as he could never have learned to use 
even the English language unless some one 
had taught it to him, so he can never come to 
believe in God unless some one dogmatically 
tells him to. 


Vv 


Now we have the word in its right context. 
Now we are at grips with the real question, 
with the real difficulty. But even so, I doubt 
if we all see quite clearly where the difficulty 
lies. All education is and must be dogmatic. 
Medicine, law, football, dress and dancing; 
in every possible department, some one must 
do the pushing and the pulling if there is to be 
any education. In other fields and subjects 
there is no sort of doubt or hesitation. But 


THEOLOGY AND EDUCATION 11 


in religion; in the life with God; in the laws 
which control our commerce with the spiritual 
world; dogmas are “taboo”! And we talk 
very seriously and very earnestly about the 
great ideal of educating people in religion with- 
out teaching them theology. And what we 
say is utter nonsense. We see the nonsense 
of it if we stop to think. But do we see the 
reason for the nonsense? Do we realize why 
we are willing to stultify ourselves and to use 
~ words wholly without meaning? 

In the last analysis I believe Mr. Chesterton 
is right in saying that what inhibits us is fear. 
“Most modern freedom,” he writes, “is at 
root fear. It is not so much that we are too 
bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are 
too timid to endure responsibility, especially 
the responsibility of affirming the truth of our 
human tradition and handing it on with an 
unshaken voice. That is the one eternal 
education: to be sure enough that something 
is true that you dare to tell it to a child. 
From this high audacious duty the moderns 
are fleeing on every side and the only excuse 
for them is that their modern philosophies 
are so half-baked and hypothetical that they 


12 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


cannot convince themselves enough to con- 
vince even a new-born babe.” * 

So far Mr. Chesterton. I think he puts his 
finger on the spot. I think what inhibits us 
is fear; the rest is ““camouflage’’; scenic dis- 
play, elaborate designs, intricate word-painting 
to cover up the ugly fact of moral weakness, 
of hesitating will. Grounding on this, Ches- 
terton goes on: “The educationist must find 
a creed and teach it. Out of all the throng of 
theories he must somehow select a theory. 
Out of all the thundering voices he must man- 
age to hear a voice. Out of all the awful and 
aching battle of blinding lights, without one 
shadow to give shape to them, he must man- 
age to trace and to track a star.’’+ That is 
sonorous writing, but it is very near to simple 
common sense. 

For us who believe in, and would foster, 
Christian education; who with open eyes and 
ready wills understand that this can be accom- 
plished only by dogmatically teaching Chris- 
tianity; there is one way and no other for us 


*G. K. Chesterton ‘‘What’s Wrong with the World” (New 
York, 1910), p. 254. 
} Ibid. p. 276. 


THEOLOGY AND EDUCATION 13 


to walk in; one thing and no other for us to 
do. We must find a Christian creed and teach 
it. And there is only one creed for us to find, 
one which we have already found; or rather, 
which, by God’s mercy, has found us; the 
Creed of the Church Catholic. It and it alone 
enshrines the truth of our human tradition; 
it and it alone conserves the whole spiritual 
capital of our race; the sum of secure appre- 
hension of spiritual things which under God 
the family of men has gained. It is the very 
charter of the soul’s liberty in the presence of, 
and by the power of its God. 


ne 


It is becoming increasingly clear,—in the 
light of the most sure results of scholarship, 
and especially in these great latter days of 
soul-searching spiritual strain—that the ques- 
tion we were so fond of asking in the days be- 
fore the war, “What is Christianity?” is one 
of the easiest and straightest questions in the 
world to answer, provided we really want to 
get the answer and are not seeking to start 
a new “home-made” religion under the patron- 
age of our Blessed Lord. The Apostolic 


14 THINK OUR YOUR FAITH 


Creed buttressed by the Apostolic record; the 
Apostolic Sacraments secured by the Apostolic 
Ministry; it is one coherent whole; tested, 
beaten out, compact together, native every- 
where, sufficient always; regenerating sinners, 
sanctifying saints, setting free the intellect, 
giving to all human arts a new and thrilling 
soul and purpose; moulding the social order; 
guarding the home; reconciling classes; knit- 
ting the nations; dignifying, vitalizing, fruc- 
tifying human life on every level, in every cor- 
ner, under every circumstance. It is our 
great democratic spiritual heritage. It is God 
in His Son and through His Spirit making 
His whole creation vocal in His praise. 

There lies our work. But if we are to do 
it we must be resolute. We must give up 
our compromising. We must shirk no sacrifice 
nor labor. We must close up our ranks. 
We must have a common mind. I do not 
overlook the difficulties. After much drifting 
it is not always easy to find the proper anchor- 
age, nor even to recognize it after it is found. 
After centuries of divided counsels and rank 
crops of private fantasies and fancies, it will 
take no little patience, wisdom and courage 


THEOLOGY AND EDUCATION 15 


to draw the line quite clearly between pref- 
erence and principle, to be “first pure and 
then peaceable.’ Indeed the really effective 
prosecution of our task must wait on the 
reunion of the Churches. Community of mind 
is, after all, not the condition precedent, but 
the sure and blessed consequent, of community 
in prayer, and above all, in worship. 

Yet there is much more to do than watchful 
waiting. We can at least get to the heart of 
our problem, even if our reach falls far short 
of the extremities. Fr. Waggett, I think, 
it is who reminds us that the true analogue 
of the Church Catholic is not a field fenced in, 
so that everybody is definitely on the inside 
or the outside: but rather a blazing sun light- 
ing a universe. Looking ahead along its rays 
it may puzzle you to know where light ends 
and dark begins; but there is no doubt what- 
ever about the sun, where it is and what it is. 


vil 


And this is my last word. I have played 
rather loosely with my assigned subject. I 
have read the banns, rather than solemnized 
the marriage, between Education and Theol- 


16 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


ogy. But I know how and by Whom their 
union is indissolubly made and fertilized unto 
eternal life, namely, by the Holy Spirit. Our 
theology must be all built up, verified, unified 
and vitalized in and by Him; our education 
must be based on faith in His regenerating, 
illuminating, and reproductive power. 

It is simply true that one does not arrive at © 
Christianity until one has received the Holy 
Ghost; that the only really logical and defen- 
sible definition of a Christian is just this—one 
who has received Him. The whole business 
of really Catholic theology is to set this forth, 
to press it home, to give the ways and means 
by which this supernatural Presence and Com- 
panionship may be established and main- 
tained; to make His call to fellowship seem 
as persuasive, as sweetly reasonable, as it is. 
And similarly the whole business of Catholic 
education is to keep the child within the circle 
of His stimulating influence; to see that all 
doors are open for His entrance; that every 
latent faculty of godly faith and fear and of 
human helpfulness may be touched into life, 
unrolled, developed, brought to full fruition 
by the light which is the life of men. 


THEOLOGY AND EDUCATION 17 


At the hundredth anniversary of this School 
of Theologians, in the midst of men of mature 
and well-furnished minds, I have been talking 
almost wholly about children. Indeed I have 
had my heart and mind deliberately set on 
the mystery and magic of an infant class. 
And my plea in self-defense is, not simply that 
we have all been children, nor even that we all 
have, or shall have, children, few or many, 
under our spiritual guidance. But rather that 
the laboratory, both of education and theology, 
is in the spirit of a very little child; that if 
we now or later, in this world or the next, are 
to be theologically sound and _ thoroughly 
well educated, we, before it is too late, must 
become as little children. 


Il 
CREEDS AND CHRISTIANITY * 


HAT is the true place of a creed in a 

religion: of any creed in any religion? 
In particular, what is the place and part of 
the Christian creed in the Christian religion? 
In itself that is a question of great interest, 
well worth our careful thought. It is one 
of the burning questions of the day. It is 
also a question of vital and practical impor- 
tance. I should like to take for granted that 
my readers want to be Christians, and want 
to be better Christians than they are. If so, 
this question of the creed will have a direct 
bearing on their personal religion, on their 
personal attachment to their Lord. I want 
them therefore to give this inquiry a personal, 
and individual note: to ask themselves, 
“What am I as a Christian to do or to think 
about the creed? Ought I to hold to it? 


*A summary of Lenten lectures in Bethlehem Chapel, 
Washington Cathedral; 1925. 


18 


CREEDS AND CHRISTIANITY 19 


Ought I to let it go? And if so, why? What 
is its real and rightful place in my religion?”’ 
So interrogating themselves, my readers may 
get out of this discussion, not only mental 
stimulus, but also, what is vastly more impor- 
tant, spiritual help and satisfaction: a growth 
in faith and grace. 


I 


My purpose is to treat this question as sim- 
ply and practically as I can, seeking to give 
a right direction to your thought, leaving 
details to be worked out by you at your leisure. 
At the start, a concrete illustration may be 
of help. Think of a journey you have made 
from one place to another: say, from Wash- 
ington to Baltimore. You can split up that 
journey, so to speak, into three parts or stages. 
Three things went to make it up. First, there 
was your desire to go. Nothing would have 
happened without that. For one reason or 
another, you wanted to go to Baltimore. 
That is where it all began. Next came the 
means of transportation which you used. You 
had to find some way of getting there. De- 
sires, however strong, are not enough to carry 


20 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


anyone on any journey to any goal. To make 
a journey you must have a means of transit. 
So you took a motor or a train, and went upon 
your way. ‘That was the second step. Lastly, 
came the arrival: the getting there: the reach- 
ing of your goal. That was the great point: 
that completed the whole thing: that meant 
the fulfillment of your original desire. The 
journey was accomplished. 

Now religion is like a journey: indeed it 
may be well thought of and defined as the 
journey of the soul to God.. Like every 
journey, it has the same three parts or stages: 
a start, a transit, an arrival. Its start is in © 
desire for God. That is where it all begins. 
*““My soul is athirst for God: yea, even for the 
Living God. When shall I come to appear 
before the presence of God?” Until, and 
unless, some such “thirst of soul”? comes to 
us, religion must remain a secret hidden from 
us, an experience quite outside of our lives. So 
it starts in a desire. Next, it must find means 
of transportation: a way of access. Some- 
thing, someone, is needed to point the way: 
to give directions: to communicate the needed 
spiritual motive power which will bring one 


CREEDS AND CHRISTIANITY 21 


where one wants to be, that is, into contact 
and fellowship with God. Lastly, to crown 
it and complete it, comes the arrival: some 
actual reality or experience of communion 
with the God of one’s desire. And the arrival 
is the chief point, the great thing. My whole 
religious hope is set on it. My whole religious 
satisfaction depends on it. Without some 
confidence or faith that God is not a stranger: 
that I know Him for what He is: that I have 
really discovered what He approves and what 
He disapproves: what He would have me do 
and leave undone: until I have some definite 
assurance that my life is in touch with His 
life, my religious desire leads me nowhere, 
comes to nothing: has no practical meaning 
for me, no bearing on my life. 

Clearly, fulfillment or arrival is the thing 
that really matters. Compared with it the 
means of transportation, the way I took to 
get to God, seems comparatively unimportant. 
And so it is, just as means are always sub- 
ordinate to ends. But none the less the means 
of access are absolutely necessary. Without 
them there could be neither journey nor arrival. 
Without them my religion would end as it 


22 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


began, in a desire entirely unsatisfied. Means 
of transit may be subordinate and secondary. 
But they are essential. 

Now that gives a key to the solution of our 
problem. For creeds are meant to supply us 
with the means of transportation on our 
religious journey. In the spiritual sphere they 
correspond to the trains or motor cars which 
we take to make our earthly journeys. Creeds, 
all creeds which have been set forth and be- 
lieved, have as their real purpose, to give or 
show to men the way of access into the Presence 
and Fellowship of God. That may be a rather 
crude and superficial way of putting it, but 
it does put us on the track: it starts us think- 
ing in the right way. Creeds are the means 
of access: they are nothing more and they are 
nothing less. They are secondary, not pri- 
mary, in religion. They are the means, not 
the ends. But they are necessary. Without 
them there could be no arrival: no realized or 
practical religion. “O that I knew where I 
might find Him, that I might even come into 
His Presence.” It is the office of the creed to 
tell us where and how. 


CREEDS AND CHRISTIANITY 23 


II 


A creed, then, although not the chief part, 
is still a necessary part, of a religion. It is 
not the end itself, but it is a necessary means 
by which the end is gained. Hence it is that 
every religion is known by its creed. The 
instant you hear of Judaism, for instance, or 
Buddhism, or Islam, or Spiritualism, or Mor- 
monism, or Christian Science, you think at 
once of their respective creeds. Each one 
has its answer to the soul’s question: “How 
and where may I find God?” It is through 
the answer which it gives to the religious ques- 
tion “How?” that each religion makes its 
claim on men’s attention and allegiance. A 
religion gets its name and definition from its 
creed. 

Tracing the matter one step farther back, 
behind each great religious creed lies the 
influence of a great religious leader. The 
historical process is quite simple and familiar. 
It is of course true that the first thing a relig- 
ious leader has to do is to quicken interest in 
spiritual things: to make people “attentive 
to hear the word of God.” In the commer- 


24 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


cial language of our day, he must make a 
market before he can make sales. Men must 
desire God before they will care to learn how 
they may have contact with Him. But the 
quickening of spiritual interest is not the only, 
nor the chief, thing which a religious leader 
has to do. If his work ends with this, then 
his influence will perish with him and _ his 
very name be lost. His permanent success, 
the measure of his spiritual leadership, is 
found in his ability, not merely to raise hopes, 
but to fulfill them: not merely to quicken 
desire, but to satisfy it. Out of his personal 
influence on his contemporaries, must come a 
clear impression, at least in summary form, 
of what he taught: of what he did: of what 
he prescribed by way of rules for the soul’s 
guidance and of remedies for the soul’s need. 
Only so can his influence remain a living 
power. Only because he leaves a creed behind 
him, does he become a figure in religious 
history. 

Now this is true in the case of Jesus Christ. 
It applies to Him. For, in any case, whether 
or not He was much more, He was at least a 
great religious Leader. More than any other 


CREEDS AND CHRISTIANITY 25 


He had power to stir men’s souls. ‘“‘ Never 
man spake like this Man.” So it is said of 
Him. Multitudes hung upon His words. 
“The common people heard Him gladly.” 
More than this, He left behind a creed more 
wonderfully effective than any other creed 
ever offered to the world. It has dominated 
the lives of millions of men and women in 
every age, and class and country. It is 
extraordinarily consistent with itself, chang- 
ing in no essential point, through all the Chris- 
tian centuries. It is as strong to convert and 
compel the hearts and minds of men to-day 
as when, through the Apostles, it first was 
given to the world. And the living influence 
of Jesus Christ has endured because of the 
creed which bears His name. It is through 
the Christian creed that Christ’s answer to the 
soul’s question, “How may I find my way 
into. the fellowship of God the Father?”’ is 
still vital and dynamic. All Christian devo- 
tion given to the Lord: all the love felt for Him: 
all the great Names given Him by those who 
have found Him to be Saviour, Lord, Media- 
tor: who have found through Him their access 
to the Father: all has come out of the creed: 


26 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


all has been possible through the creed. It 
has all happened because the creed was there 
to be believed. Without the creed, Christi- 
ianity would have become an unmeaning, 
hopeless impulse: indeed it would never have 
been more than a fleeting spiritual emotion, 
rising like a flame and dying into darkness. 
To give up all creeds means to give up all 
religion. To give up the Christian creed 
means to give up the Christian religion: to 
give up Christ Himself as a religious Leader. 


iit 


So out of our Lord’s influence as a religious 
Leader came a creed which through the ages, 
down to our own day, has preserved and made 
available for us His personal and character- 
istic directions and prescriptions for the “‘jour- 
ney of the soul to God.” What is the distinec- 
tive feature of that creed? ‘There can be no 
mistake about the answer. The record of 
history is quite definite and clear. Put quite 
simply it is this: namely, that at the very 
beginning, as soon as there was any Christian 
creed at all, the very heart and core of it «was 
Jesus Christ Himself. From the very first 


CREEDS AND CHRISTIANITY 27 


He was its centre. He Himself was preached 
as the Gospel which had come through Him, 
as the creed which had been learned from Him. 
In other words, He Himself summed up the 
creed which was given in His Name. Now 
that is unique in all religious history. It has 
no parallel. In other religions it was not the 
teacher, but the teaching, which went into the 
creed. In Christianity it worked just the other 
way. The Teacher, not the teaching, makes 
‘the creed. No Mohammedan, no Buddhist, 
would ever think of saying that Mohammed 
or Gautama is his creed. But that is pre- 
cisely what the Christian ‘says, and has said 
from the beginning, about Jesus Christ: “Jesus 
is Lord: Jesus is Saviour: Jesus forgives sins: 
Jesus is judge: Jesus gives life: Jesus is all 
in all.” Such expressions come naturally, 
instinctively from the lips of Christians. They 
give the root conviction which, from the first, 
has brought forth all other items of Christian 
faith as a tree trunk puts forth branches, or 
as spring flowers ripen into autumn fruit. 

I say this was the very essence of the Chris- 
tian creed when it began: when it took its 
earliest form: when there was any Christian 


28 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


creed at all. For we must remember that 
Christianity began to be taught as a religion 
when the Apostles began to preach at Pentecost. 
And this was clearly according to the Lord’s 
intention. He wrote nothing Himself. He 
set forth no system of dogmatic teaching. 
He organized no new religious worship. But 
one thing He did with extraordinary care and 
patience. He trained twelve men. Their 
training was the chief concern and effort of 
His ministry. They were to understand 
His secret. He was to speak through them. 
His message to the world was to find outlet 
and expression through these men whom He 
had trained. So it all happened just as 
He had planned. The world first learned the 
Christian creed through the teaching of the 
Twelve. And there can be no question that, 
if you let the impact of that teaching fall fairly 
on your ears, you will find the new creed which 
it embodies wholly centred in the Person of 
the Lord. Heis the Gospel. He is the revela- 
tion. Nothing at all is there except the Per- 
son of Jesus Christ, living, reigning, saving, 
and having the final prerogative of judgment. 
God has not waited for man to come to Him. 


CREEDS AND CHRISTIANITY 29 


God has come to man. God has taken the 
initiative, not sending a prophet but being 
* manifest Himself. To be with Jesus is to be 
with God. To come to Jesus is to come to 
God. Coming to Him you reach your jour- 
neys end. You have arrived. That is the 
sum of it. 

You will remember that in the Gospel 
according to St. John you have these words 
put in Jesus’ mouth: “I am the Way, the 
Truth and the Life; no man cometh unto the 
Father but by Me.” And also these: “‘He 
that has seen Me has seen the Father.”’ These 
words very fairly represent the burden of all 
Apostolic teaching. Whether you are listen- 
ing to Peter, or Paul, or John, or James, or 
Stephen, or any other Apostolic messenger it 
is the same. “‘Come! Believe in Him. Get 
in touch with Him and your religious problem 
is forever solved. You will have your answer. 
To be with Jesus is to be with God.” That 
is the distinctive keynote of the Christian 
creed. It has no other. 


30 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


IV 


So the Christian creed from the beginning 
had the Person of Christ as its very core and 
centre. “There is no other name under 
heaven given among men whereby we must 
be saved”: that was the message given to the 
world by the Apostles. But we must look into 
this matter a little more carefully. The exact 
form which the creed took, the precise words 
employed to make its meaning clear, are of 
great interest. The Apostles had a difficult 
problem on their hands. In the Gospel days 
as “‘the Lord Jesus went in and out among 
them,’ He was day by day making an extraor- 
dinary impression on them. More and more 
He captured and captivated them. More — 
and more they leaned on Him and depended 
on Him for everything they needed both for 
soul and body. His mysterious significance 
made itself felt, held them in thrall, completely 
dominated them. But it was one thing to 
feel it and to yield to it in the familiar inter- 
course of daily life: it was quite another thing 
to find words to match their feelings: words 
which would adequately convey to others the 


CREEDS AND CHRISTIANITY 31 


experience which had come to them through 
contact and fellowship with Jesus Christ. 
Practically, without question, they had given 
Him the place of God Himself. He had the 
value, the authority, of God for them. That 
is evident on the very surface of the story. 
But just how were they to put it into words? 
To say all briefly, the term they came to use, 
and which the Church has held to ever since, 
was the term Incarnation. ““The Word was 
made flesh and dwelt among us.” So we read 
in the Fourth Gospel. That was the phrase 
adopted: that was the form chosen as best 
suited to express all that was involved for 
them in their devotion to, and thought about, 
their Lord. And the Church took it from the 
Apostles and enshrined it at the heart of the 
greatest and most explicit of her creeds: “He 
was wncarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin 
Mary and was made man.” 

To make it clear why they chose this term, 
and what they meant by it, notice that in using 
the term Incarnation they were rejecting two 
other alternative terms which might have been 
employed. First, they refused to deify a man: 
that is, to raise to divine place and honor one 


32 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


whom they believed to be essentially a man. 
Now deification of men was very common and 
very popular in the Apostles’ time. There 
were temples dedicated to these hero-gods. 
There were pantheons crowded with their 
images. ‘The Emperor himself demanded and 
received divine honors. Deification, so to 
speak, was in the air. Nothing was easier 
for, or more congenial to, contemporary 
thought. But it was utterly impossible for 
the Apostles. For the Apostles were Jews, 
and as Jews they knew that deification was 
literally a soul-destroying error: that it was 
and always must be fatal to religion. Raise 
men to God’s level: think of man as God: 
and what you really do is to deny that there 
is any God at all. You have put a creature in 
the place of the Creator. There is no place 
left any more for God. The Jews had come 
to know this, to realize it, as the cardinal prin- 
ciple of religious faith. The whole strength 
of their great prophetic creed lay in their 
acknowledgment of one only God, the supreme 
Lord and Creator of all things, visible and in- 
visible. ‘‘Hear O Israel, the Lord thy God, 
the Lord is One”: that was their guiding star 


CREEDS AND CHRISTIANITY 33 


of faith. No compromise was possible for any 
Jew. Whatever the explanation was of the 
extraordinary authority and influence of Jesus 
Christ: whatever might be the inner secret 
of His Person, He was not, He could not be, 
a man who later on had become God. Deifi- 
cation was utterly impossible. 

And, secondly, they no less decisively refused 
to be satisfied with the word wmmanence, or 
the idea which lies behind it: To say that 
God is wmmanent in men, or in a man, means 
that God’s Spirit, or God’s life, enters in and 
takes possession. It comes near to the word 
“inspiration,” except that we connect wnspira- 
tion rather with a special gift of utterance: of 
speaking in the name of God: while wmma- 
nence is broader in its meaning and signifies 
that the whole of a man’s life, and not his 
words alone, is evidently under God’s direct 
control and guidance. Immanence, therefore, 
is a very high and noble word. If you fill it 
with its fullest meaning, and, when applying 
it to Jesus Christ, mean that in Him God was 
emmanent in the highest possible degree, in a 
degree far greater than has ever been true of 
any other man, you have said a great deal and 


34 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


made a high confession. But wmmanence, in 
its greatest possible significance, would not do 
for the Apostles. It was too limited, too nar- 
row. It stopped short of just what was most 
real and vital in their experience. You will 
remember that originally they had been dis- 
ciples of John the Baptist. They had found 
ammanence in him. He was a prophet, the 
greatest of the prophets. And it was John 
himself who had sent them to Jesus as to One 
Who could be to them, and do for them, what 
he could never be ordo. They needed Someone 
Who could not only baptize them with water 
but with the Holy Ghost: Someone Who could 
not only bring them to repentance by con- 
vineing them of sin, but could take away their 
sins. He, John, could not do that. He was 
inspired. He was a prophet. God was immea- 
nent in him. But that was not enough. All 
he could do was to point them to, and send 
them to, Another Who would begin where he 
John, had to leave off. And when, obedient 
to their first master, the disciples went from 
John to Jesus, they found that John was right: 
that in Jesus was something more, much more, 
than ¢wmmanence: more than a God-inspired 


CREEDS AND CHRISTIANITY 35 


man. Power went out from Him, power to 
which seemingly there was no limit. In Jesus 
they found Someone Who could act for God: 
could do for them what no man, however God 
inspired, could do, but what God alone could 
do. That was why they refused to speak or 
think of Him in terms of tmmanence. The 
word would not fit their need. It would not 
do. 

What finally convinced them that something 
more than wmmanence was revealed in the 
Person of Jesus was the cross: that is, the power 
that came out of His death. They did not 
realize it at the time. On Good Friday every- 
thing seemed lost. They felt beaten, crushed, 
mocked, utterly despairing. They trusted it 
was He Who should prove to be Redeemer, 
but He had miserably failed in face of the unbe- 
lief and cruelty of His own people. So it had 
seemed. But that mood lasted only until 
Easter. When they were convinced that He 
was risen, then they go back again to His 
cross and find in it, not a defeat at all but the 
very secret of His power: not a gibbet but a 
throne, the supreme vindication of His Lord- 
ship over the lives and destinies of men. If 


36 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


that were true of Him, there was indeed some- 
thing more in Him than the word iwmmanence 
could possibly imply. And they must find 
some word, some phrase, which would make 
unquestionably clear to men what was that 
something more than tmmanence which was the 
very soul of their belief in Him. 

So they were led to the belief in Incarnation. 
As we read the Apostles’ writings, we can see 
their minds irresistibly converging first upon the 
idea, then upon the word. Let me quote three 
famous passages by way of illustration. The 
first is from St. Paul: ‘‘ When the fulness of the 
time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of — 
a woman, made under the law, to redeem 
them that were under the law, that we might 
receive the adoption of sons.” ‘The second, 
from the Epistle to the Hebrews: “‘God, Who 
at sundry times and in divers manners, spake 
in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, 
hath in these last days, spoken unto us by His 
Son Whom He hath appointed heir of all 
things: by Whom also He made the worlds: 
Who, being the brightness of His glory, and the 
express image of His Person, and upholding all 
things by the Word of His power, when He had 


CREEDS AND CHRISTIANITY 37 


Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right 
hand of the Majesty on high.” 

And lastly, let me repeat the final and 
unequivocal witness of the Fourth Gospel, 
where all is said once and for all: “‘The Word 
was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we 
beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only- 
begotten of the Father, full of grace and 
truth.” So the Incarnation of God Himself in 
Jesus Christ became historically, at the first 
and for all succeeding Christian ages, the key 
to the whole Christian creed. Faith in the 
Incarnation as a historic fact was the fruitful 
seed out of which came the entire structure 
of the creed, the whole system of Christian 
doctrine, discipline and worship. 


Vv 


So far we have been concerned only with 
definition. What is a creed for? What is 
the Christian creed? How was it made? 
What does it mean? What is its chief point? 
I have tried to give answers to these questions: 
answers not in detail but only in the rough. 
And I think the answers I have given will 
stand the test. I think they correspond to 


38 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


the facts of the case. The definition of Chris- 
tianity ought to be apart from controversy: 
it ought to be the same for a Christian and a 
non-Christian. Whether you believe the creed 
or not should make no difference in your defini- 
tion of it. And of course we must have our 
definitions clear before we can go on to consider 
questions of truth or value. But at the end 
comes the personal challenge of it to each one 
of us. Isit true? Is it to be believed? What 
are its evidences? ‘Three things I would say, 
and very briefly: 

First, it is extraordinarily complete and | 
comprehensive. It covers all the ground. It 
meets us at every point of our experience. 
Nothing in human history or human life is » 
alien to it or apart from it. That is why there 
has always been a note of finality in Christian 
teaching. Christianity has never been content 
to be ranked as one religion among many. 
It has always boldly claimed to be the fulfill- 
ment of all religion. All non-Christian faiths 
have been as the age-long prayer of humanity 
to God. The Incarnation is God’s answer. 
That has been the dominant note in Christian. 
missionary preaching. And if the Incarnation 


CREEDS AND CHRISTIANITY 39 


be indeed a fact, then such a claim is fully 
justified. For there can be no fuller revelation 
of God to man than by God’s taking human 
nature on Himself. There can be no more 
perfect fellowship between God and men than 
is secured for all men and for all time by the 
Word of God made flesh. This wonderful com- 
pleteness and finality rightly makes a unique 
appeal. As Browning puts it: 


“The acknowledgment of God in Christ will solve for thee 
All questions in the world and out of it.” 


That is the first evidence of truth. 

Secondly, the Christian creed has proved 
itself universally effective at all times and under 
all conditions. ‘This seems a miracle but it is 
sober fact. Our Lord came into the world 
at a particular time and place. He never 
travelled. He never broke through any of the 
narrow limits which confined His earthly life. 
He was a Jew, a peasant, adapting Himself to 
current customs, to local habits and to existing 
social and religious organization. That such 
a life should prove to possess moral and spir- 
itual power in undying and unparalleled de- 
gree, with all sorts and conditions of men, 
with all races and classes and cultures, is a 


40 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


fact which cries out for explanation. It remains 
inexplicable unless, with the insight of Apos- 
tolic faith, we discern in Jesus the Man of 
Nazareth none other than the Son of the Most 
High God incarnate. 

Lastly, there is the strange penetrating 
appeal to every human heart which lies in the 
audacious challenge of the creed. One of the 
early fathers of the Church asserts that “‘every 
human soul is naturally Christian,’ by which 
I suppose he meant that we are so made in our 
spiritual nature that nothing else or less than 
such a proof of Divine love could convince or 
satisfy us. God, if He did that for us, would 
have the key to unlock our inner secret, and 
set free the whole strength of our devotion. 
It was said of our Lord in Gospel days that 
He had no need to make inquiries about the 
people whom He met, because “He Himself 
knew what was in man.” He knows what is 
un men. That is the surest evidence. So men 
have always felt. So we feel to-day. That 
is the marvel of it. That is the abiding evi- 
dence pressing on each one, calling for an 
answer, forcing us to a decision. 

The sum of all is this: every true-hearted 


CREEDS AND CHRISTIANITY 41 


child of man, if he has within him that desire 
for God which is the earliest impulse of religion: 
and if, having this, he sits down before the 
proclamation of God Incarnate in Jesus Christ, 
and takes it in and lets it sink into his heart 
and mind; will come to give in his witness that 
the thing is true, to “set to his seal” as St. 
John puts it, that to come to Jesus, to believe 
in Jesus, is to come to God and by faith to abide | 
in fellowship with God, and that there is no other 
way. 


Ifl 
THE USE OF CREEDS* 


I 


€ Diets proper or effective use of anything is 

determined by its usefulness. You must 
discover what purpose a thing is meant to 
serve before you can determine the best way 
in which to use it. A néedle, a piece of bread, 
a telescope, all are useful, though in very dif- 
ferent ways. If you employ each to serve its 
proper end you will learn the secret of its most 
effective use, and you will also learn how to 
discriminate in needles, bread and telescopes. 
But if you try to eat a telescope, or to see 
stars through a needle’s eye, you will not only 
be vastly disappointed and chagrined, but you 
will also wholly miss the true significance of the 
article you have so grievously misused. You 
may end by having a permanent prejudice 
against each of these three eminent servants of 


* Printed in The American Church Monthly, 1925, immedi- 
ately before the meeting of General Convention. 


42 


THE USE OF CREEDS 43 


men’s needs. Usefulness, that is, determines 
use. 

That is a very elemental principle. It was 
inculeated, with much anxiety and care, in our 
nursery days, when the misuse of thoroughly 
good and useful articles was a constant menace 
to our infant lives. But, elemental though 
it be, it is a principle which we in maturer 
days seem habitually to forget when dealing 
with more abstract yet more important things 
than pins or buttons; as, for instance, with the 
Church’s creeds. 

It is clear that we are not agreed as to the 
proper use of creeds, or as to the proper creeds 
to use. May it not be that the reason for this 
disagreement is because we are not altogether 
clear as to the usefulness of creeds: as to just 
what purpose creeds are meant to serve? 
Certainly the old adage that ““One man’s meat 
is another man’s poison ”’ is strikingly illustrated 
in the case of creeds. A friend, of highest char- 
acter and keenest intellect, who had come out 
of Unitarian belief into the Church’s faith, 
once told me that he could not take the Nicene 
Creed upon his lips without a surge of emotion 
running through him which almost choked his 


44 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


utterance. Another friend, of recognized Chris- 
tian leadership and eminent in conference and 
council, has reiterated his opinion that creeds 
(especially the Nicene Creed) are enemies of 
true religion. These cases I take to be fairly 
typical. And between these two extremes are 
many shades and degrees of ““maximizing”’ and 
“minimizing”’; of friendly and unfriendly atti- 
tude. This state of things suggests the wisdom 
of “‘moving the previous question” in order 
to clarify the issue: to ask, that is, what are 
creeds for? what is their proper usefulness? 


II 


Now for modern men a brilliant light has been 
thrown on this question by what may fairly 
be called undisputed science. Perhaps the 
chief achievement of recent psychology has 
been the demonstration of the dynamic and 
creative energy of thought, or, to put it more 
generally, of mental life. This has become 
an axiom, a first-principle, upon which is reared 
an immense structure of application and exper- 
iment. The theory and practice of suggestion, 
of psychoanalysis, and of kindred lines of 
research and investigation, are ultimately based 


THE USE OF CREEDS 45 


upon it. The truth of it seems definitely and 
once for all established. Strangely enough 
we theological folk have been slow to see the 
point, or feel the force of it, in our chosen 
field. We still lend a ready ear to the quite 
silly fallacy that in religion it does not matter 
what a man believes. Surely this poisonous error 
finds its complete and ruthless antidote in the 
Freudian dictum that, when will and imagina- 
tion are in conflict, it is always imagination, 
and not will, which conquers. We may think 
that the Freudian doctrine goes too far and that 
his school of teaching sometimes plays fast and 
loose with words. But past peradventure it is 
proven for us moderns, not only that “what 
we think, that we are,”’ but also that “what we 
think, that we have begun to do.” All active 
life, that is, is of one piece. All is one process. 
The distinction between theory and practice 
does not hold. The two indissolubly merge. 
For theory is practice getting under way. 

We Christians should really have been pre- 
pared for this. We should have known it all 
along. From end to end it is embedded in 
the Gospel. It is fundamental in the simplest 
ethical teaching of our Lord. It is the basis 


46 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


of all His moral judgments. The dominance 
of the inner life is His primary assumption. 
And, with absolute consistency, the Apostles, 
and the Church following them, teach that the 
coming of the Holy Spirit;—which, speaking 
roughly, signifies God’s personal activity in us, 
—is the fulfillment of all Christ’s promises, 
and work and teachings: the crowning gift 
which, on the one hand, vindicates the wisdom 
of God’s love, and, on the other, makes redemp- 
tion a reality. With this clear in our minds, 
these latest scientific demonstrations ought 
to have come simply as confirmations of an 
antecedent faith. Whereas, in point of fact, 
it has been science which has revealed to us 
the meaning of the age-long faith, with some- 
thing of the shock of a wonderful discovery. 
But, anyhow, and once for all, orthodoxy has 
been scientifically rehabilitated. “Straight- 
thinking” about God, which is what orthodoxy 
means, is seen to be the only means by which 
we can come into right relationship to Him. 
If our thought cannot move out in confidence 
toward God, then no approach of any kind is 
possible; no contact can be had; no obedience 
rendered; no prayer or worship offered. What 


THE USE OF CREEDS AT 


one really believes of God is the one thing 
which practically matters in religion, for it is 
one’s belief in God, one’s thought of God, 
which controls (1 had almost said creates) 
one’s whole religious life. Creeds therefore 
come back with a rush upon us moderns, for 
they are seen to hold within them the issues of 
our spiritual destinies. There is latent in 
them incalculable energy. ‘They come to us 
welded and shaped with the hot zeal of pas- 
sionate devotion. They are stored with impe- 
rious and compelling spiritual: motive power 
which, if brought into direct action on the lives 
of men and women, is capable of carrying 
them on to the blood-red test of martyrdom. 
Such is the usefulness of creeds, as moderns 
see, or ought to see it. 


Itt 


Of course this holds in a purely Christian 
context and has a purely Christian application. 
The phrase “Discipleship of Christ” may 
serve well enough as a rough and summary 
account of Christian life. But if we so use the 
word “‘discipleship’’ we must do justice to the 
psychology of the disciple. We must under- 


48 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


stand how his discipleship is reached and real- 
ized; above all, how it is proved and tested. 
To be attracted by the moral beauty of the 
Gospel portrait; to be ready to approve and 
adopt the rule of life laid down by our Lord 
in precept and example; all this, good and 
hopeful as it is, is but to skim the surface of 
“discipleship.” If that is as far as the would- 
be “disciple”? goes, or means to go, he has not 
made the “great surrender’: he is his own 
man still, not Christ’s. Not till his mind 
confirm his will can be put his heart into obe- 
dience: can he freely pour out the full strength | 
of his devotion. In other words the disci- 
pleship of a disciple is rooted in, and measured 
by, his creed. 

Here surely we find the reason for our Lord’s 
anxiety as to what His disciple thought about 
Him: as to what name or title they were pre- 
pared to give Him. The real point of the 
famous incident at Caesarea Philippi often, 
I think, eludes us. More significant than 
Peter’s answer is the Lord’s question which 
elicited it. Obviously He was not concerned 
to draw from these men enthusiastic praise, 
or honorific titles. He cared only to attach 


THE USE OF CREEDS 49 


them closely and permanently to Himself: to 
make them really competent ambassadors and 
representatives. That could be accomplished 
only when the homage of their thought gave 
guarantee that their hearts and wills were at 
His service. Hence His evident relief, His 
moving thankfulness, when Peter’s “great 
confession”’ laid bare for the first time the solid 
rock: gave Him the promise of a true disci- 
pleship, a true devotion, to depend on. 

What subsequently happened to Peter and 
the rest confirms at every point this analysis 
of the incident at Caesarea Philippi. Peter’s 
high thought about His Master seemed utterly 
disproved by Calvary. Emotion was still left: 
emotion at its highest, breaking the heart. 
And the allegiance of the will remained intact: 
none of them would have swerved a hair’s 
breadth from His moral teaching, from the 
ideal way of life which He had shown. It was 
their thought which had shriveled up and per- 
ished. And their discipleship had _ perished 
with it.* Then came the Easter revelation. 


* It is extraordinary how, with many “‘modernists,” the super- 
stition lingers that there is still a Gospel, even if the end came at 
the cross. Such a view, for a real “‘modernist” who holds to 
history and knows psychology, can be only superstition. 


50 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


Their whole world was changed: that Is a 
commonplace. But what made the change 
so sudden and so permanent? It was not 
that they loved Him any better, or that, more 
than ever, they hung upon His words. It 
was simply that their creed had been recovered. 
Their thought about Him had been to crown 
Him Lord. And that thought about Him 
was now, once for all, once and forever, proved 
to be true. He was all that they had thought 
Him; all and more; how much more they 
were to learn, and learn to tell to others. Now 
they could love Him unreservedly “with all 
their mind” and, so loving Him, their lives” 
were triumphantly and wholly His, in adora- 
tion and in sacrifice. So, for our learning and 
enlightenment, the new psychology makes its 
comment on the ancient history. “If thou 
shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, 
and shalt believe in thine heart that God 
raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be 
saved.” St. Paul here sounds the depths of the 
potency of “orthodoxy”; of the power of the 
creed to make disciples. And the well-fur- 
nished, “‘up-to-date,” Christian psychologist — 
will fully justify St. Paul. Nothing less than the 


THE USE OF CREEDS 51 


sincere confession of the Christian creed can 
bring the life of the confessor under the com- 
plete dominion of the Lord. Mind moves 
the man. If the mind is Christ’s, the man is 
Christ’s. Christ holds him who holds the 
creed. The office of the creed then is to make 
disciples. Nothing else can do it; nothing 
less can bind the disciple irrevocably to the 
Master, or make the would-be Christian wholly 
Christ’s. That is the creed’s work; that is its 
usefulness. 


IV 


Now this is not merely theory: it is over- 
whelmingly proved by the whole course of 
Christian history. It ‘has been in fact the 
Christian creed which from the beginning has 
made men and women into Christ’s disciples, 
binding them to Him, “grappling their souls 
with hooks of steel.’ There can be no ques- 
tion of the creed’s effectiveness as an instrument 
for the making of disciples. ‘The great tide of 
martyr-like devotion to our Lord, running 
steadily, undiminished and unbroken, through 
the centuries; the worship and adoration 
poured out before Him; the purity and beauty 


52 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


of the host of Christian saints; the heroic love 
and labor of missionary leaders; all have come 
from, and are explained by, the corporate 
creed of the believing body. | 

I emphasize that phrase: the corporate creed 
of the believing body. For we as Churchmen 
are concerned with nothing else or less than 
that. For us there is, and can be, but one 
creed, the symbol of the one faith of the one 
Church. We may speak of creeds as in the 
plural, and doubtless there are two creeds in 
our Prayer Books. But as Churchmen we are 
bound to take account, not of their separate- 
ness, but of their essential unity. They are 
not variants, or alternatives. They do not 
represent diverse or divergent interpretations 
of the Church’s mind about its Lord. They 
are quite identical in meaning. They have 
an identical experience behind them. They 
bear common and convincing witness, not to 
the views of particular individuals, or groups, 
or cultures, or conditions, or races, or ages, but 
to the whole faith of the whole body. That 
is why we prize them and rely on them. That 
is what we mean when we say they have a 
quite unique and unparalleled authority. For 


THE USE OF CREEDS 53 


within them lies the communicated secret of 
the victorious spiritual power which the Church 
has had from the beginning. By means of 
them the Church has told, in condensed sum- 
mary, the whole story of the faith which has 
overcome the world. And the work was done 
in no haphazard fashion, but with the most 
eareful and scrupulous. deliberation. The 
Church wrought out its creed bit by bit, sen- 
tence by sentence, almost word by word, in 
the face of questions, doubts, denials and dis- 
putes. It was thoroughly tested, and only 
alter thorough test, and because it was found 
to correspond with, and to do justice to, the 
faith by which the body of believers lived, was 
it universally and confidently accepted and 
proclaimed. The vitality and vigor of the 
Church’s creed to-day—in both its most famil- 
iar forms—its continuous and continuing ade- 
quacy to the Church’s need, is an extraor- 
dinary, almost a mzraculous, evidence, in view of 
the circumstances and the vicissitudes of history, 
of its expert competence to do its work. It is 
with this in view that we must face the ques- 
tion as to how this august creed may best be 
used. Its usefulness must properly decide its use. 


54 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


We who are bent on the sacred work of secur- 
ing disciples for our Lord, will in any case, 
if we are wise, aim to take captive for Him 
men’s inmost thoughts; to make Him sole and 
undisputed Lord of the whole range and con- 
tent of their mental life. We have seen this 
to be the crucial point in the making of dis- 
ciples. How shall we do this? There is a 
perfectly clear answer: by bringing men to 
believe, in the full meaning of belief, the Chris- 
tian Creed. But have we the true Christian 
creed? Can it be identified? Is it available? 
Again the answer is quite clear: the Church 
is one: the Church’s faith is one: the Church’s 
creed is one: and we have that creed at hand, 
intact, complete, as explicit, as sufficient, as 
effective, as when it first took form. 


Vv 


I have spent much time and space in what 
may seem wholly preliminary to the real 
matter in debate: in discussing, that is, what 
at the start I called “‘the previous question.” 
I have so far dealt only with the usefulness 
of creeds, and in particular of those creeds 
which, representing as they uniquely do, the 


THE USE OF CREEDS 55> 


essential faith of the whole Church, are alone 
and rightly known as Catholic. I have said 
nothing as to use. But, if I have made my 
point as to the creeds’ usefulness, the time has 
not’ been wasted, for, with this settled, the 
question of use at once becomes much more 
limited and simple. Indeed the debate is taken 
almost wholly out of the arena and atmosphere 
of controversy. For if my contentions hold, 
then optional use of creeds can mean hardly 
more than wise or prudent use. The debate 
hinges on the point as to how, and when, and 
where, the immense dynamic power of these 
proved and tested symbols of the Church’s 
faith can be most effectively employed. It 
would be certainly unreasonable, even irra- 
tional, to think of leaving out the creeds in 
the supposed interest of religious propaganda, 
for religious propaganda depends entirely on 
creeds, history and psychology being consent- 
ing and convincing witnesses. Nor can there 
be any really reasonable plea for the substi- 
tution of other or of better creeds than those 
in our Prayer Books. There are no other 
creeds which adequately enshrine the Church’s 
faith, and there can be no better ones if the test 


56 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


of excellence in creeds is to be found in ability 
to build up the believing body; to make tried 
and true disciples out of all nations. 

We have, in other words, in our possession 
the best of all possible instruments for the 
doing of a given work; an instrument tested 
and tempered, shaped and adapted with ex- 
traordinary nicety to our purpose. We are 
indeed responsible for its right use. With this 
responsibility we have concomitantly the choice 
or option of changing or varying, not the creeds 
themselves, but the use we make of them under 
our present rules. Is there need of changing ~ 
our rules and rubrics? Are we as a matter of 
fact using the creeds in the best way? That 
would seem the real point and center of debate. 

As a problem it is neither very serious nor 
very difficult. The history of the use of creeds 
is singularly plain. From the first the creeds 
have served the Church in two essential needs: 
the need of worship and the need of teaching. 
The creeds provide, on the one hand, means 
for the corporate confession of the common 
faith, to the glory and praise of God; and, on 
the other hand, they furnish careful and well- 
considered formulas for the instruction of 


THE USE OF CREEDS 57 


catechumens who desire full and free share 
in the Church’s worship and service of its Lord. 
We to-day use the creeds in precisely the 
same way, in our Eucharists and at our Bap- 
tisms. This two-fold use clearly sets the norm. 
Common-sense, no less than reason, necessarily 
approves it. All other uses can be only sub- 
sidiary or preparatory. 

In the Eucharist, there is a reasonable ques- 
tion as to the creed’s invariable use. There is 
some weighty precedent againstit. But in any 
case the creed is irrevocably and inextricably 
woven into the warp and woof of the Church’s 
Eucharistic worship, whether it be separately 
said ornot. So there is no great problem here. 

As to Baptism, infants indeed are rightly 
brought to be baptized, though they have 
neither faith nor creed. Yet the Church is 
justified in so receiving them only if she is 
ready to secure them in their full inheritance 
of faith and grace (of which the creed is title- 
deed), and to see to it that they are “brought 
up in the nurture and admonition of the 
Lord”’: that is, brought up to hold the creed 
and to be held by it in true discipleship. And 
in the case of adults desiring Baptism or 


58 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


Confirmation, yet held by doubts or difficulties, 
a policy of concession or of minimizing in 
matters of belief does not and cannot provide 
the right solution. It involves a double error. 
It does injustice alike to the Church and to 
the catechumens. An analogy is found in the 
military training of recruits. As “rookies” 
men may be quite full of zeal and fervor. It 
would doubtless be a great joy and satisfaction 
to them to be sent at once into the fighting line. 
Certainly their patriotism should be recognized 
and welcomed. But to employ them in the 
service without experience or knowledge would 
as surely expose them to unnecessary danger 
as it would weaken, and not strengthen, the 
army’s fighting force. In like manner, to admit 
to the Church’s communion and _ fellowship 
men and women imperfectly prepared, only 
partially converted or convinced, is to jeopard- 
ize their own spiritual safety no less than the 
Church’s integrity and missionary power. 
Grace does not work mechanically. Grace 
works through faith and is received according 
to, and in the measure of, the faith of them that 
seek it. ‘The Church is not a society of special 
privilege, dispensing favors on certain arbitrary 


THE USE OF CREEDS 59 


terms. The Church is the witnessing and 
working Body of the Lord. Salvation is not 
merely release from pain and penalty; not 
merely the gift of peace and pardon. Salva- 
tion is sound spiritual health ministered to 
men by Christ that He may have on earth 
servants who can truly serve Him in the 
extension of His kingdom, and who will find 
their own salvation in His service. The creed 
is the Church’s “‘manual of arms” in its spir- 
itual warfare. It is the Church’s measure of 
spiritual preparedness for worship and for work. 
Only in the strength of the faith enshrined 
and embodied in the Creed can men be made 
meet for the Lord’s use and able to appropri- 
ate and to apply His grace. 


VI 


The sum of all seems to be this. We have 
very probably misused, and very possibly 
abused, the Church’s creeds. We have almost 
certainly neglected them and misinterpreted 
their purpose. But we shall be better guided 
in exercising the option which is ours already 
and in any case—the option, that is, of using 
the creeds with better understanding of their 


60 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


nature and of the spiritual needs of men—than 
in seeking to establish new rules governing the 
use of creeds by the authority of General 
Convention. 


IV 
THE CREED AND THE MINISTRY * 


I 


ECENT notorious events have forced this 

matter to the front. Much has hap- 
pened to. shock and distress all right-minded 
Christian people. Yet shocks, though pain- 
ful, may be salutary. They may rouse us 
out of culpable and dangerous indifference: 
out of a false and blind security. God grant 
it may be so in this case. For this matter of 
the Church’s Creed is absolutely crucial. We 
neglect it at our spiritual peril. And we all, 
clergy and laity alike, have been grossly negli- 
gent. That is the reason why, when attacks 
are made upon the Creed: when its importance 
is denied and even ridiculed: when its plain 
meaning is diluted or distorted by shallow 
sophistry or by pseudo-science: that is why 


*Part of a charge to the Convention of the Diocese of 
Pennsylvania; 1923. 
61 


62 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


we know not where to turn or what to answer: 
that is why there is so much wild and foolish 
talk: so little calm and clear facing of the issue. 
We have been caught off our guard. We 
have been thrown into confusion and dismay 
at the very point where our lines should have 
been most closely ordered: and our defence 
most sure and impregnable. 

I say the question of the Church’s Creed is 
crucial. For if the Church disown her Creed, 
she cuts off the very life-blood from her heart: 
she severs the arteries through which the grace 
of God flows in. That is literally true. And, ~ 
that being true, it follows that if any of the 
Church’s officers disown the Church’s Creed, 
either in private faith or public teaching, 
while yet retaining office, they are not merely 
guilty of the breach of a most sacred trust 
which they have sworn to keep inviolate: they 
are also responsible in God’s sight for the 
spiritual disaster that must follow to their 
own flocks first, and through them to the 
Church at large. 


THE CREED AND THE MINISTRY 63 


II 


These are strong words and I am justified 
in using them only on one condition: only, 
that is, if it be really true that the Creed is 
vitally important to the Church. But is 
that true? The Creed is a formula, a set of 
sentences, so many words. How can a for- 
mula be vital? How can mere words save 
life? Well, let us see. In this case illustration 
will help us more than argument. 

Now it is most certain that life or death 
may hang upon a word; they oftendo. A sign- 
post, for example, may mean, has often meant, 
to a lost traveller, the difference between food, 
warmth, shelter, safety on the one hand: and 
hunger, cold, exposure, danger on the other. 
Deface it, conceal it, break it down: and you 
take away his hope: you rob him of his chance. 
A stroke or two of paint, a word or two in print, 
bring life: their absence, death. 

Or take a chart: giving the soundings: 
showing the rocks and reefs: marking the chan- 
nel with its lights and buoys. A chart will 
guide a ship to port with all souls safe. But 
tamper with it, mark it wrongly, tear it up, 


64 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


and the best skill of helmsman counts for 
naught and the ship goes on the rocks. 

Or, coming closer, a physician’s orders for 
his patient: the prescription which he writes 
and leaves behind him: the treatment he 
advises: these, if he has skill and has rightly 
diagnosed the case, may be the means of cure: 
may bring life out of death. But if the doc- 
tor’s orders are forgotten: if his formulas and 
medicines are altered: or his advice ignored, 
the patient may die who might have lived. 

Now the Church’s Creed is like a sign-post: 
like a sea-chart: like a medical prescription. - 
It points the way to God. It marks the course 
to steer by from this world to the next. It 
tells us how we may be healed, and pass from 
sin to holiness, from death to life. 


Iit 


And it does all this, and claims authority to 
do it, in the name of Jesus Christ. It all comes 
from Him and leads to Him. It all depends 
on Him. The Creed speaks of Jesus Christ 
in every single syllable. Look at its history. 
See where it came from. There is no need of 
scholarship, or scientific training, or critical 


THE CREED AND THE MINISTRY _ 65 


acumen. He who runs may read. Turn the 
pages of the New Testament: the Gospels, 
the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles: and 
see it taking place under your very eyes. 
First came the impression made by their new 
Master on the devout, plastic, simple-minded 
Jewish artisans who were His first disciples. 
Then came their expression of the impression 
which He had made on them: their account, 
that is, of what He had come to mean to them. 
They found in Him guidance, healing, light and 
life. He grew to be to them Lord, Saviour, 
Judge: their all in all. There was no limit to 
His influence, authority, sufficiency for all 
their needs. And then, one day, they said so: 
they spoke it out: they wrote it down: Peter 
first, at Caesarea Philippi: then doubting 
Thomas: then John and Jude and James: 
and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews: 
and Paul: and Stephen and every other 
Apostolic writer and confessor. The whole 
New Testament from end to end is but the 
record of it and the witness to it. Faith be- 
came vocal: love found expression: thought 
put on words. So the Church’s Creed was 
born: for worship and for witness: for praise 


66 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


and propaganda. That is its origin and his- 
tory. The Deity of Jesus Christ is indeed the 
core and centre of the Creed, but it is so because 
it was first the core and centre of the faith of 
which the Creed is the symbol and expression. 
The first disciples found Him, their Lord 
and Master, doing for them what God alone 
can do: being to them what God alone can 
rightly be. He did the work of God: He 
played the part of God: He took the place of 
God. And so they called Him God, and made 
the Creed. 


IV 


And mark you, it is no exaggeration to say 
that the first disciples made the Creed as we 
now have it: as the Church has held it ever 
since. For it all comes—the whole of it, in 
its shorter or its longer form—it all comes, 
every syllable and word of it, from that great 
discovery, from that tremendous affirmation, 
that Jesus, the man of Nazareth, is none other 
than the Son of God. There was no Creed 
before that great discovery was made. And 
in the Church’s Creed there was nothing really 
new inserted afterwards. For the Creed is 


THE CREED AND THE MINISTRY — 67 


not a string of detached sentences: it is one 
whole. It is articulated: that is, made up of 
articles or members, as a body is made up of 
inseparable limbs and joints. Ii you wound 
or mutilate a living body, at any point, you 
begin a process which, unless checked, will 
drain it of its blood: will put its very life in 
peril. 

So with the Church’s Creed. Each article 
has its own place in the whole truth which 
the Creed tells about the Church’s Lord. 
Tear any one of them out of its place and the 
process of depletion instantly begins. The 
truth and grace of Jesus Christ is lost, by just 
so much, to His Church and therefore to His 
world. He becomes less than He is, less than 
He might be, less than He wills to be, to us for 
our salvation. His hold is loosened: He 
becomes remote: He fades into the background: 
into the pages of a book: into the events of a 
past history: and, almost ere we know it, 
we have left to us only a memory, only a voice 
calling uncertainly across the centuries, only a 
good man and a great teacher: we are left— 
God pity us—we are left, just as St. Paul told 
us we should be left, im our sins, without 


68 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


redemption, without a Saviour, without hope, 
without God in the world. 


Vv 


Does this seem overwrought imagination? 
Do you doubt it? Every Christian century, 
every epoch of the Church’s history, will fur- 
nish illustration. But you do not have to look 
so far afield. Look about you now. Think 
of those reputed Christian teachers, some of 
them Priests in our Church, who are now urging 
us to “simplify” the Creed (as they like to 
put it) by leaving out the Virgin Birth and the | 
Resurrection of the Body. Why do they ask it? 
What is the difficulty? Nothing is more cer- 
tain than that these two articles present no 
difficulty to those who whole-heartedly accept 
the Incarnation: that is, who affirm with the 
Apostles, with the New Testament, with the 
Church from the beginning that, “for us men 
and for our salvation,” the only Begotten Son 
of God ‘“‘came down from Heaven... and 
was made man.”’ If that be really true, there 
is no difficulty in these articles. On the 
contrary, they are natural and almost inevi- 
table consequences. Even if there were no 


THE CREED AND THE MINISTRY _ 69 


word in Holy Scripture as to the way in which 
He entered, and then left, this earthly life, 
we should be almost driven to suppose, by 
the very logic of our faith, that His entrance 
and His exit must have been unique, in keeping 
with His own absolute uniqueness. His Virgin 
Birth, the Resurrection of His Body, give us 
what we need in our thought of Him. They 
complete the picture: they make it all one 
simple, solid, satisfying whole. 

Where then is the difficulty? Why do these 
men ask that these articles be stricken out? 
Well, for answer we may very safely look much 
deeper down, much farther back. And so 
looking we shall have no great trouble in finding 
what the real reason is. For the logic of dis- 
belief is as peremptory and inexorable as the 
logic of belief. If to believers in the Incarna- 
tion these articles seem quite natural and con- 
gruous, to those who disbelieve it they must 
seem the very opposite. If Jesus Christ is 
not the only Begotten Son of God made man; 
if, in the last analysis, He is but a man among 
other men although the best of men, then a 
Virgin Mother and a risen body are empty 
portents, foolish superstitions, unnecessary, 


70 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


even contradictory. They disfigure and de- 
grade the quiet, normal story of a merely 
human birth and a merely human death. — 
Have I made it clear? Do you see the 
point? Do you see how the thing works itself 
out, for belief on the one hand, for disbelief 
on the other? Do you see why I am justified 
in saying that the Creed of the Church stands 
or falls as. one inseparable whole? If the 
Church disown one part of it, in the end she 
will find herself disowning all. And when the 
Church disowns her Creed, she dies, for she 
will have separated herself from her Lord, — 
from the Giver of her life. 


VI 


One word here dealing with the Creed’s 
authority. What do we mean by the word 
authority in this connection? There is a clear 
distinction to be drawn. The Church has no 
power, human or divine, to compel men to be- 
lieve her Creed. Men cannot be compelled 
to believe, even that there is a God or a life 
beyond the grave. There was no compulsion 
on men to believe in our Lord when He was 
visibly among them. Some did, but most did 


THE CREED AND THE MINISTRY 71 


not. Even among the Apostolic group, Judas 
turned traitor. And obviously disbelief pre- 
vailed. He was rejected, mocked and cruci- 
fied. And shall the Church’s Creed prevail 
where the Church’s Lord did not prevail? 
Shall it compel belief when He did not compel 
belief? Of course not. The very notion is 
absurd. Why, to-day the majority of living 
- men and women, even of those who are familiar 
with the Creed, reject it. Only a minority 
believe it.. 

Yes, but the Church is part of that minority. 
That is the point. The Church believes the 
Creed. The Creed is authoritative for the 
Church. The Church has no other faith: 
has never had another faith: except that of 
the Creed by which she has lived from the begin- 
ning, from her very birthday. The Church 
has no reason for existence in this world except 
to propagate her faith and to persuade men to 
accept her Creed. ‘The Church has no author- 
ity to compel any man’s belief, but she has 
an indefeasible and authoritative claim upon 
the truth and honor of her agents and ambas- 
sadors. 


12 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


Vil 


Brethren, there is no dishonor or disgrace 
in poverty, whether it be poverty of purse 
or poverty of faith. Why, our Lord came to 
preach the Gospel to the poor. He loves the 
poor. And He is particularly patient with 
those who, being poor in faith, come to Him 
for more. “Lord, increase our faith’: no 
prayer is more sure of His answer. Think how 
patiently, how tenderly, He dealt with His 
Apostles in their stupidity and dulness: in 
their misunderstandings and mistakes: how | 
He was content to wait till the seed of faith 
which He had planted had taken root and 
grown and become strong enough to make its 
“great confession.” We must try to be as 
patient and as tender as He is with those who 
can scarcely believe in the full glory of the 
Gospel of the grace of God. No; poverty 
is not dishonor. 

Dishonor comes only when we use dishonest 
means for the relief of our poverty. To steal 
another’s purse because our own is empty 1s 
dishonest. And faith means more than money: 
therefore, to take away another’s faith because 


THE CREED AND THE MINISTRY 73 


our own is failing is still more dishonest. Be 
on your guard as you listen to the facile praise 
of “liberalism” in religion: particularly of 
“liberalism” in dealing with the Church’s 
Creed. Much modern talk in praise of “‘lib- 
> is but the prostitution of a noble 
word. It is easy to be lberal with other peo- 
ple’s money, but it is not praiseworthy. And 
it is not advisable if you desire liberty. For 
it is apt to lead not to liberty, but to its oppo- 
site. And even the world knows what to call 
it. It calls it stealing. The kind of liberalism 
which gives away the Church’s faith, having 
little of its own, deserves a harsher name and 
will receive, if God be just, a sterner punish- 
ment. 

To sum all up, to say a final word, remember 
who it was Who said “‘whosoever shall cause 
to stumble one of these little ones that believe 
in me, it is better for him that a millstone 
were hanged about his neck and that he were 
cast into the sea.” God guard us from that 
condemnation. God send us men. God keep 
us true. 


eralism’ 


V 
THE NICENE CREED TO-DAY * 


“Now we belicve, not because of thy speaking: for we have 
heard for ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Saviour of 
the world.” St. John IV:42. 


I 
IXTEEN hundred years ago there was 


assembled a council of the Christian 
Church in the city of Nicaea in Asia Minor. | 
Nicaea to-day is but a wretched Turkish 
village, symbol of alien conquest and oppres- 
sion. But in the year 325 it was a worthy and 
convenient place of meeting for the Church. 
The centre of Christian influence and popula- 
tion was at that time still in the East. Nicaea 
was the second city in the Province of Bithynia. 
It was prosperous and populous and easily 
accessible. It was only a few miles distant 
from the palace of the Emperor Constantine at 
Nicomedia and it was the Emperor himself 


* Preached in the Bethlehem Chapel, Washington Cathedral, 
at a Service in commemoration of the 1600th Anniversary of 
the Council of Nicaea; 1925. 


74 


THE NICENE CREED TO-DAY 75 


who had summoned the Council and was to 
preside over its sessions. 

Oi the complete sincerity of Constantine’s 
conversion to Christianity there may be perhaps 
a reasonable doubt. But there can be no 
doubt at all of the favor and goodwill which he 
showed toward the Church during his reign 
as sole ruler of the Empire. He treated the 
Church as the chief ally of his throne. He 
~ aimed in every way to promote the Church’s 
welfare. He made it a chief matter of polit- 
ical concern to secure and deserve the support 
and loyalty of his Christian subjects. Some- 
thing of what this meant to the Christian 
population of the Empire will come home to 
us if we recall that up to the year 311, that is 
only fourteen years before the Council of 
Nicaea, the Edict of the Emperor Diocletian, 
directing the destruction of the Christian reli- 
gion throughout the Roman realm, was still 
in force. This Edict had marked the dis- 
astrous climax of the successive waves of per- 
secution which since the days of Nero had 
broken on the Church. And now, hardly 
more than a decade afterwards, the successor 
of Diocletian in the seat of supreme power, is 


76 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


summoning the first great Council of the 
Church and himself presiding at its sessions. 
All the Bishops of the Church were sum- 
moned to Nicaea. There are said to have 
been not less than two thousand of them alto- 
gether. This is worth noting especially by 
those of us who may not fully realize how 
incurably Episcopal the Church was in those 
early days. More than three hundred of 
them actually came, with their attendant 
clergy. Under the circumstances it was a fair 
proportion and a very representative assembly. 
Indeed it was the most truly representative 
assembly of the Church that ever met. Nat- 
urally the majority were Eastern Bishops. 
But there were some from the Western Med- 
iterranean Dioceses, men of recognized influence 
and leadership, standing in close and trusted 
relation to the Emperor. Hosius, Bishop of 
Cordova in Spain, universally respected and 
beloved, was perhaps the leading figure. Alex- 
ander, Bishop of Alexandria, also played a 
central part, for it was in his Diocese that 
Arius, the rector of a fashionable city parish, 
started the doctrinal dispute which led to the 
calling of the Council. And in the train of 


THE NICENE CREED TO-DAY 77 


Bishop Alexander came the great Athanasius, 
then only a Deacon, but already wise and 
strong in counsel, with clear mental grasp and 
piercing spiritual insight. The Bishop of Rome 
was too old a man to travel, but two of his 
presbyters were on hand to represent him. So 
the stage was set and the Council came together, 
in the month of June and in the year of our 
Lord 325. 


II 


Before we pass on to consider what the 
Council did, notice two points of special inter- 
est. Nicaea was the first General, or Ecumen- 
ical, Council of the Church. The first Council, 
that is, which was deliberately planned so that 
every local church or community of Chris- 
tians throughout the Roman Empire might 
have its place and part. The Church as a 
whole, as one Body under one Head (and 
that Head, not the Bishop of Rome, but the 
Lord Christ Himself), was summoned for the 
first time in its history to come together to 
bear witness to its common faith. In those days 
the unity of the Church was very real. It 
had been so from the beginning. From its 


78 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


very birth the Church was intensely conscious 
of its unity. It had one faith, one Lord, one 
Baptism: one rule of worship, one way of life; 
one recognized and universal apostolic min- 
istry. Long before the New Testament was 
written (and remember that even when the 
Council of Nicaea met the complete New 
Testament as we now have it had not yet come 
into existence) this new close-knit society or 
fellowship of Christians was building itself up 
and spreading itself out in all directions. The 
Gospel made its way, not as a spoken message, 
but as a social movement, as a Divine Society 
reaching out to gather all men one by one into 
its membership. And now, after some three 
hundred years, a great dispute had come to 
distress and try men’s souls. New and startling 
assertions were being made. The very foun- 
dations of the faith, which had been handed 
down from the Apostles, were being questioned. 
How should these questionings be answered? 
How should these doubts be set at rest? Why, 
the whole Church must do it. The whole body 
must decide. The faith was a corporate, not 
an individual, possession. It belonged to the 
whole body. Then let the body bear its wit- 


THE NICENE CREED TO-DAY 79 


ness. Let the whole body meet and say its 
Creed. That is the meaning of Nicaea. That 
is why Nicaea marks an epoch in Church history. 

And in this great representative assembly 
there were only Bishops. That is a second 
point of interest. The body of believers acted 
through its chief officials. As the Bishops 
spoke in council: as they signed their names 
to the conciliar decrees, so the whole Church 
everywhere, its entire membership, was held 
to have given in its testimony and to have 
certified its common faith. 

Now that is not a method of procedure which 
would be congenial to modern minds or man- 
_ners. In these days a Church assembly made 
up entirely of Bishops would hardly be regarded 
as fully and finally representative. Indeed 
there is abroad a rather definite opinion that 
a meeting of the House of Bishops will bear 
watching! We must remember that in the 
sixteen centuries which intervene between us 
and Nicaea much water has flowed under the 
bridge. Much has happened to weaken and 
discredit old traditions. And especially in 
those sixteen hundred years the greatest of all 
spiritual tragedies has overtaken us in the 


80 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


disunion and disunity of Christendom. It is 
this dismemberment of the one holy Body of 
the Church which for us makes the Nicene 
Council seem impossible and quite unreal. 
Not only in its composition and methods of 
procedure, but in the very idea and ideal that 
underlay it, it is alien to it, almost inconceivable 
in these present days. 

Yet when all is said and done, the ancient 
Church, one and undivided, was in the right 
about its Bishops and in its treatment of them. 
The very genius of Episcopacy is in its repre- 
sentative, or, if you prefer the word, its demo- 
cratic character. The much-feared and much- 
abused doctrine of Apostolic Succession really 
means just this: that through the ages, from 
the Apostles down to us, the Church has had 
in its Bishops an unbroken line of certified 
and competent trustees set over its spiritual 
treasury. By and through its Bishops the 
Church guarantees to all its members every- 
where and always that they shall have their 
portion of meat in due season; that they shall 
be secured in all their rights and privileges as 
members of God’s great family on earth. And 
at least in those early days (to say no more, 


THE NICENE CREED TO-DAY 81 


to make no larger claim), the Bishops man- 
fully and truly played their part. They were 
faithful in their stewardship. They were wor- 
thy of their people’s trust. In persecution and 
amid the storms of controversy, they stood 
their ground steadily and strongly, not exploit- 
ing their own individual ideas, not for their 
own personal ambition or prestige, but as wise 
and faithful guardians and shepherds of their 
flocks. As they came together at Nicaea from 
every corner of the Empire, they brought their 
people with them in their minds and hearts. 
They were moved by a sense of great respon- 
sibility. They were, as no other men could 
possibly have been, adequate and worthy 
representatives of the whole Church. So the 
Council met, truly ecumenical and entirely 
Episcopal, and the one because it was the other. 


III 


So meeting, what did the Council do? The 
main point can be very briefly put. Open 
your Prayer Books where the two Creeds— 
the Apostles’ and the Nicene—are printed one 
above the other. Compare the second para- 
graphs of the two Creeds: or, more exactly, take 


82 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


the phrase in the Apostles’ Creed which reads: 
in Jesus Christ His only Son Our Lord, and lay 
it side by side with the corresponding phrase 
out of the Nicene Creed which is as follows 
(as we have just been saying it): In one Lord 
Jesus Christ, the only Begotien Son of God; 
Begotten of His Father before all worlds, God 
of God: LInght of Light: Very God of Very God: 
Begotten, not made: Being of one substance with 
the Father: By Whom all things were made. 
Now these two sentences: the one so short, 
the other so much longer, mean precisely the | 
same thing. In the one case the Church’s 
faith in Jesus Christ is rolled up into exceed- 
ingly small compass. In the other case, pre- 
cisely the same faith has been unrolled or 
evolved, as we should put it in our modern 
phrase.* 

That is to say the identical faith in our Lord 
has been unrolled from:five words into forty- 
five: and very wonderful and moving and 
majestic words they are. 

Why was the unrolling done? what was the 


*Tt is worth while to note, in passing, that the word “‘evolu- 
tion,” rightly used, always means the unrolling or rolling out of 
what is already present, but rolled up. 


THE NICENE CREED TO-DAY 83 


motive? In answer let me use a homely illus- 
tration. Suppose I were to say to you: “I 
have a friend whom I think you also know. 
I have great trust in him.” You might say 
in answer: “Yes, I know him, and I agree 
with you. I feel as you do.” If you said that 
there would be no need of saying more. But 
if you were to say: “Yes, I know your friend, 
but I am not so sure about him. What makes 
you have so much confidence in him? how 
far are you really prepared to trust him?” If 
you said that, then I should go on. I should 
have a great deal more to say. I should go 
into more detail. I should tell more of what 
my friend had done for me and been to me: 
how he had never failed me: why I was pre- 
pared to trust him to the limit. It might 
take some time and many words before I 
should feel sure I had done justice to my friend 
and to my faith in him. But I should not be 
adding anything to what I meant in the first 
place when I simply said: “I have a friend 
in whom I greatly trust.” Except for your 
doubts and questions I should not have said 
another word. But you did doubt and ques- 
tion. What else could I do but answer? 


84 THINK OUR YOUR FAITH 


Now that is just what happened at Nicaea; 
what gives the reason for Nicaea. Up to that 
time the Church had never had one formal 
carefully wrought out universal creed. Local 
communities of Christians, East and West, 
were accustomed to use short and simple sum- 
maries of what was universally believed by 
Christians everywhere. These were called Bap- 
tismal Creeds. ‘They were used chiefly at the 
administration of Holy Baptism. They served 
as tests and guarantees that the candidates 
for Baptism were prepared to believe what ~ 
the Church believed and taught. The most 
famous and familiar of these Baptismal Creeds 
is the one which we know as the Apostles’ 
Creed, and which we use at our Baptisms. 

For the purpose, and for the time, these 
early Creeds sufficed. The whole belief of 
the Creed was, as I have said, rolled up in 
them; just as my belief in my friend might 
be rolled up in the four words: “I greatly 
trust him.” 

But as time passed questions were asked 
and doubts suggested. It was quite inevita- 
ble. For as the Church made its way and 
gained in influence, it came into contact and 


THE NICENE CREED TO-DAY 85 


conflict with other philosophies and faiths. 
It was called on to explain: to amplify: to 
give its reasons: to say more precisely what 
it meant. “You say you believe that Jesus 
Christ is Lord,” so the question came. “But 
in what sense? Lord of what? of whom? How 
far does His Lordship reach? has it any limits, 
and if so, what are they?” Or again: ‘You 
call Him the Only Son of God? Surely a son 
cannot be equal to His Father. For a son is 
dependent on his father, and created by his 
father, and if Jesus Christ was created, if He 
is a creature, how can He be really God?” 

Or once more: “You talk about an incar- 
nation: about God Who is spirit taking flesh? 
How can this be true? Perhaps you do not 
take it literally: perhaps all that you mean 
is that you think Jesus Christ is a kind of 
demi-god: more than man no doubt; but less 
than God: a man so pure and good that he 
was raised to Divine honors. That would not 
seem so difficult: not so inconceivable. Tell 
us then: we want to know: what really is 
your creed?”” What could the Church do, 
facing such a question, but find an answer: 
but unroll her creed? Very carefully and con- 


86 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


scientiously she did it: choosing words, and 
testing phrases: seeking the best form and 
medium at hand for making clear, past all gain- 
saying, what she thought about the Lord: 
not concerned with argument: not interested 
in speculation: only anxious to declare the 
truth of Jesus Christ as it had been revealed 
to her: as it had become her very life and 
breath. And at Nicaea the Church spoke out: 
and made her answer. “‘From the beginning 
I have said Jesus is Lord: Jesus is Son of God. 
All my faith and hope and love are in those . 
words. But you say this does not satisfy you: 
that it is ambiguous: that you want more. 
Well, here it is. Here is what I mean. Jesus 
is only begotten Son: begotten, not created: 
eternally begotten before time was: always 
the Son: the only Son. He is God coming 
out from God: Light shining forth from Light. 
He is one with the Father. He is of the very 
essence of the Father. It is He by Whom all | 
things were made. It is He Whom I worship 
and adore as Very God. It is He, and none 
other, Who was incarnate: Who was made 
man.” 


4% 


THE NICENE CREED TO-DAY 87 


IV 


Summed up then very briefly, that was 
what the Council of Nicaea did and why it 
did it. Was it good work? was it really worth 
the doing? was it well done? Men have said 
“no” and are still saying it. They would 
persuade us that the Nicene Council was led 
off on a side issue: that it lost its way among 
unintelligible mysteries: that the Nicene Creed 
conceals rather than reveals the simple Gospel. 
Nay, more, men tell us that it does not really 
matter just what you think of Jesus Christ: 
what names you call Him by: what rank you 
give Him. Rather the essential thing is to 
take His words to heart and try to live by 
them: to set His human life before you and try 
to imitate it. There lies the real heart of 
Christianity: not in Nicene doctrine. Well, 
that point of view is quite familiar, and at 
first sight sounds very plausible. But it 1s 
at least a comfort to remember that it is not 
a modern point of view at all: though you often 
hear it on lips of modern men. So far from 
being “‘modern”’ it is in fact older than Nicaea. 
You would have come across it in the second 


88 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


and third centuries in Alexandria and Antioch 
just as you come across it now: shall we say, 
in Boston and New York? And it was just 
that kind of thing: just that point of view: 
which the Nicene Fathers met together to 
repudiate and to deny. They were persuaded: 
those three hundred Bishops speaking for the 
Church: that the very heart and soul of their 
religion was at stake. As Athanasius puts 
it in a memorable phrase: “our contest was for 
our all.” And, brethren, if you fairly think 
of it and face the issue, there can be no doubt - 
that the contest at Nicaea was for our all: 
that the Christian religion was at stake. 

Mark you, I say the Christian religion: not 
the Ten Commandments: not the moral Law: 
not even the Sermon on the Mount. But the 
Christian religion as a whole and in its every 
part. For the Christian religion is centered 
in the Person of our Lord. It means personal 
relationships to Him. It has been well and 
truly said that Jesus Christ came into the 
world, not to preach a Gospel, but that there 
might be a Gospel to be preached, and that 
Gospel was Himself. Christianity, I say, from 
the beginning has meant personal relation- 


THE NICENE CREED TO-DAY 89 


ship to Jesus Christ, and Christians believe 
that personal relationship to Jesus Christ means 
personal fellowship with God. 

Now if we, poor, weak, blind and sinful men 
really can come into living fellowship with the 
Almighty: the All Holy One: something 
wonderful has happened to us: something that 
has freed us from our sins and braced our wills 
and quieted our fears and lifted us out of our 
ignorance. and blindness. Somehow, some- 
where, the grace of God has touched us and 
transformed us. The power of God has en- 
tered into us and renewed and recreated us, 
and drawn us to holiness. And the Christian 
message from the very first has been that this 
wonderful thing has really happened: and that 
it has all come about through Jesus Christ. 
“Tf any one be in Christ he is a new crea- 
ture.”~ So St. Paul had put it. That is just 
what Christians feel and have felt from the 
beginning. 

What difference does it make then what 
name we call Him by: what rank we give 
Him? Why, it makes all the difference be- 
tween delusion and reality, between truth and 
falsehood. If Jesus Christ has not really done 


90 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


all this for us and for all men: if it is not within 
His power to do it: why then we are trusting 
in a lie. | 

Man must have a Saviour: not an example 
only: but a Saviour, for man cannot save him- 
self. Now only God can save. If Jesus be 
not God, then Jesus cannot save. To deny 
His Godhead is not simply to dishonor Him: 
it is to rob men of their Saviour: to leave them 
in their sins: separated from the life of God, 
without God in the world. ‘Our contest was 
for our all.” It was quite true. 

It was good work, then, that the Council 
did: work that greatly needed doing. And 
they did their work extraordinarily well. They 
made the real meaning of the Christian faith 
so clear that there could be no mistaking it 
thereafter. 

From that day to this, through sixteen cen- 
turies, their statement of the Faith has held 
a place throughout all Christendom, entirely 
unique, quite without a rival, needing neither 
addition nor subtraction, as the sufficient and 
convincing answer of the universal Church 
to the great question: “What think ye of 
Christ?” 


THE NICENE CREED TO-DAY 91 


Vv 


Finally, what is it to us? what do we owe to 
this great Council: and how shall we pay 
our debt? 

Well, we owe to it the fact that the Christian 
religion has survived and is still a living power 
and energy among us. But for Nicaea the Gos- 
pel of Christ “would have dwindled away 
into a legend:” a fairy tale: a myth: a mem- 
ory. “If we are Christians”—I am quoting 
the measured words of a great scholar and 
clear thinker—“if we are Christians in the 
sense of St. Paul (and the Apostles) we owe 
it under God to the work of the great Synod.” 
That is not exaggeration: not mere rhetoric. 
History has proved it in the past: is proving 
it to-day. Wherever the Nicene faith in 
Jesus Christ has been abandoned or abated 
by groups or communities of men still calling 
themselves Christians (and there have been 
many instances), there has always followed, 
there must always follow, increasing uncer- 
tainty and doubt of the reality of spiritual 
things: even of God Himself. When a ship’s 
anchor rope is cut, the vessel immediately 


92 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


starts to drift, though perhaps very slowly. 
So men, though still meaning to be Christians, 
if they let go the Nicene Creed, drift out of the 
clear light and true knowledge of God, which 
Christ came into the world to give. It may 
be very gradual. For spiritual tides run 
slowly. But it is sure. It is but sober 
truth to say that if we have still among us 
living, saving, conquering Christian faith, we 
owe it, under God, to the Council of Nicaea. 

But to recognize this and to thank God for it, 
is not to pay our debt. For there is no magic - 
in a formula; even in the Nicene Creed. Be- 
lieving it may be, indeed, a badge of ortho- 
doxy, but merely to believe it is no proof of, 
and no substitute for, Christian living. Really 
to believe it is to live by it: or rather to live 
by and with and for Him Whom the Nicene 
Creed exalts and glorifies. It is not enough 
to exalt Him in our thought and spoken word 
to the very throne of Godhead: to a perfect 
equality with God: unless He is in very truth, 
in life and death, God of God for us. 

It is not enough—rather it is to risk certain 
condemnation—to call Him Lord in the full 
sense taught us by the Nicene Fathers unless 


THE NICENE CREED TO-DAY 93 


we crown Him Lord of our lives and give Him 
His throne within our hearts, to reign with- 
out a rival. 

Would you be Nicene Christians? Then, say 
to those three hundred Bishops, in the confi- 
dence that they will hear, in spite of sixteen 
separating centuries: 

*““Now we believe, not because of thy speak- 
_ ing: for we have heard for ourselves, and know 
that this is indeed the Saviour of the world.” 


VI 
THE WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD * 


“TI shrank not from declaring unto you the whole counsel of God.” 
Acts XX : 27. 


HE whole counsel of God: the phrase goes 

very deep and far. First: it takes us to 
the heart of Christian faith. Secondly: it 
gives the reason for the Church’s tenacious 
hold upon the Creed. Consider each point 
separately. Each has a timely message. 


I 


The whole counsel of God: there lies the 
secret of the Church’s faith. In the Lord 
Jesus 1s revealed the whole counsel of God for 
us men and for our salvation. In Him whole 
God comes to whole man. So the Church has 
believed from the beginning: from the moment 
of its birth. The Church was born believing 


*Preached at the Consecration of the Rev. Samuel Babcock 
Booth as Bishop Coadjutor of Vermont; 1925. 


94 


THE WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD 95 


it. And out of that belief has sprung every 
power and energy of Christian life: every act 
of Christian worship: every grace of Christian 
character. 

Indeed it is this wholeness of the Gospel of 
our Lord, as revealed by the Spirit to the 
Church, which gives its true meaning to the 
great word catholic. We commonly take cath- 
olic to mean simply universal. But surely 
mere extension, even to the four corners of the 
earth, has no great merit or significance. A 
patent medicine may be found everywhere and 
make its way into every home, but that does 
not prove it is a sure cure for disease. Ability 
to take men in is, by itself, an ambiguous 
qualify or gift. On no such insecure founda- 
tion can the Church’s catholicity be based. 
The Church is catholic, not because it is found 
everywhere but because it really can save 
everybody: because it has “the whole counsel 
of God,” and can therefore bring to every man 
all that any man can ever ask in his search for, 
and life with, God. 

But note carefully that wholeness does not 
mean monopoly. The Church has the whole 
truth and the whole grace of Jesus Christ but 


96 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


it has not all His truth and grace. It has no 
monopoly. 

God is not bound. He has indeed His reg- 
ular ways of working. He has His laws, as 
we somewhat blindly call them. These laws, 
these normal methods, these settled habits, of 
God’s providence are altogether good and 
blessed. They are signs and proofs of God’s 
unending patience; of His enduring faithful- 
ness. We should be quite lost without them. 
We should not know what to expect from day 
to day. But God’s laws are not fetters which ~ 
obstruct His will and restrain His love. They 
do not hamper or impede His freedom. So 
the truth and the grace of God are found not 
only in the Church: they are found outside its 
boundaries as well. Whenever truth is spoken, 
it is God’s truth and has been taught by Him. 
Whenever righteousness is done, it is God’s 
righteousness, gift of His grace and fruit of 
His Spirit. We are false to our faith unless 
we claim for, and ascribe to, our Lord all 
truth, all beauty, and all goodness which ever 
have been, and ever will be, in the world. 

But this makes only the more apparent, and 
the more convincing, the wholeness of the rev- 


THE WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD 97 


elation entrusted to the Church. Here we 
find, not scattered pieces or fragments of the 
truth, but all parts and pieces of it knit to- 
gether, fitted each to each, and all fulfilled in 
Him Who is the Truth: not mere isolated rays 
of light, shining here and there in the prevailing 
darkness, but the great central Sun lighting 
the world: no sudden stream, starting from 
_ out the stricken rock, but rivers of living water 
running to quench a whole world’s thirst: no 
mere miracle of manna, given in stress of 
famine, decayed by sunrise, but the Bread of 
Life eternal, in inexhaustible supply. Not 
monopoly but wholeness. 

You will see at once that this gives the 
explanation of the dominating missionary im- 
pulse which drove the Church into the world 
to bring the whole world to Jesus Christ: to 
preach the Gospel to every creature. The 
missionary motive came from within, not from 
without. It was not primarily sympathy for 
human need: not the call from “the man of 
Macedonia.” It was the will of God, now 
finally revealed and understood. God had 
revealed His whole counsel to His church, 
not for the Church’s sake, but that the Church 


98 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


in turn might declare it to the world. To fail 
in mission, therefore, was to deny the faith: 
to be recreant to trust: to fall under certain 
condemnation. ‘“‘Woe ws me if I preach noi the 
Gospel.”’* As it was then, brethren, with 
St. Paul and the Apostolic Church, so it is 
now with us. Woe to us, if we preach not the 
Gospel. And for the self-same reason. To 
sum up then so far: not monopoly but whole- 
ness: the whole counsel of God revealed in 
Jesus Christ: that takes us to the heart and 
soul of Christian faith. 


s¥e 


Equally, it explains, and fully justifies the 
Church’s devotion to her doctrine: the Church’s 
tenacious hold upon her Creed. By way of 
illustration, take a physician at his work. It 
has two sides, two aspects. It is a science 
and an art. The doctor finds his science in 
the materia medica: in the text-books; in the 
accumulated knowledge of diseases and their 
cure: which was first put into his hands, and is 
now carried in his head. His art, on the other 


* I Cor., x, 16. 


THE WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD 99 


hand, is the healing of the sick. And clearly 
his art is the main thing. His aim, his life- 
work, is not to gather and disseminate infor- 
mation about diseases and their cure. His 
aim is to save men out of sickness: to make 
and keep them well. His science is subordinate 
and secondary: it is only a means. It is not 
the end itself. 

Yet he needs his science. He cannot do 
without it. However much he longs to be a 
healer, he cannot heal, unless he knows how 
to go about it. His science may be only a 
means but it is the only means. Where would 
the doctor be without his science? 

Well, where would the Church be without 
its Creed? ‘The cases are exactly parallel. 
The Church’s ministers are commissioned to 
be physicians of the soul. And their work has 
its two sides. It is a science and an art. And 
with them, as with the doctors, their art is the 
main thing. Their real end and aim is, not 
to inform men about God, nor to instruct them 
in the Life of Christ, nor to give them right 
ideas of forgiveness, atonement, sacramental 
grace. ‘Their real aim is to bring men to know 
God for themselves: to “‘beseech them, on 


100 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God”: * 
to have their sins forgiven, and their souls 
refreshed and strengthened by the sacraments. 
Creed is less than character. Doctrine is sub- 
ordinate to life. It cannot be put too strongly. | 
One is the end. ‘The other is but the means. 

But it is the only means. Without a genu- 
ine spiritual science the Church, as physician 
of the soul, can have no standing, no excuse, 
no justification for its claim. Therefore the 
Church clings to the materia medica; to the 
approved authorities; to the consenting witness - 
of the experts. Therefore the Church keeps — 
tenacious hold upon the Creed. 

Go back to the first days: go back to the 
Day of Pentecost itself. See the Apostles 
coming out into the streets, down from the 
Upper Room where the Lord had just poured 
on them the full light of His truth, and the full 
power of His grace. The crowds press on them, 
conscious of a crisis, eager for a sign, waiting 
an explanation. Then Peter speaks. And 
when he stops, the response to that first Chris- 
tian sermon comes in the momentous question: 


“What shall we do? If this be true: if God 
* II Cor., v, 20. ' 


THE WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD 101 


is what you say and Jesus all you claim: how 
may we be included in the blessing? How may 
we too receive the gift? What shall we do?” 
Instantly, without pause or hesitation, Peter, 
speaking for the Church: or, rather, the 
Church speaking through Peter: gives the true 
answer, points the right way, prescribes the 
sure remedy: “‘Repent ye and be baptized 
every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, 
unto the remission of your sins, and ye shall 
receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”* So the 
dogmatic system of the Church: its materia 
medica: its spiritual science: came into exist- 
ence. There you have, in the form of plain 
unvarnished narrative, the origin, the justi- 
fication, the necessity of the Church’s Creed. 
So it was born but not completed. ‘There 
was more to come: more that had to come. 
As time went on, it was found that there was 
more which must be said in order that what 
was said might be quite clear. So, both while 
the Apostles lived and after they were dead, 
the Church amplified the Creed. And why 
should she not have done so? Surely it was 
as natural as it was necessary. The surprising 


* Acts ii, 38. 


102 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


thing is not the length but the shortness of the 
Creed as it finally took shape. Evidently 
there was a strong, constraining purpose to 
keep it short while at the same time including 
it in what was shown to be vitally essential. 
This severe restraint tells its own story. The 
real end of the Church’s creedal statements is 
simply to declare, and to be so faithful in declar- 
ing that no man shall either lose his way, or 
come short of the “whole counsel of God” 
for his blessing and salvation. 

“TI shrank not from declaring to you the 
whole counsel of God.” It is natural and 
right to put the words into the Church’s 
mouth. And in the Church’s mouth the 
words are true. There have been times of 
stress and strain: of sore trial and temptation. 
The Church, at one point has been weak and 
fallen into compromise: at another, it has 
been proud and arrogant, claiming over-much 
authority and knowledge: at still another, it 
has been dull and torpid, indifferent to present 
tasks and future visions. 

But wherever the continuity of the Church’s 
life has been preserved: wherever the Apos- 
tolic Word and Sacraments and Order have 


THE WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD 103 


held their place: there the Church has been 
true to its trust, has kept the faith, has not 
shrunk from declaring the whole counsel of 
its God. 

Once more to sum up what I have been say- 
ing: the whole counsel of God: that gives the 
secret of the Church’s faith, and the explana- 
tion of the Church’s firm hold upon the Creed. 
The whole counsel of God is what the Church 
believes in, and lives by: and the Church is 
given over, in loyalty and love, to declare it 
to the world. 


Til 


Where does all this lead? Why, it leads 
straight to the Episcopate. That is why the 
text is timely, because it helps us to understand 
what we are doing. We are here to add an- 
other Bishop to the great company: another 
link to the long line. What is a Bishop really 
for? What will this Bishop be about when 
we have consecrated him? It is easy enough 
to make a list of the various items which will 
fill up his time, and crowd the pages of his 
diary. He will be attending to, so far as it is 
given him, general diocesan affairs, especially 


104 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


the welfare of the Clergy. He will be ordaining 
and confirming. He will be visiting the par- 
ishes and missions, as chief shepherd of the 
flock. He will be presiding at meetings great 
and’ small. No modern Bishop may escape 
their ceaseless round. He will be making ad- 
dresses of all sorts and to all sorts. He will 
be dedicating buildings and many other things 
as well. He will be raising money, writing 
letters, and giving interviews. He will be all 
things to all men, and to all women too. In- 
numerable doors are open to him: innumerable 
calls are made upon him. His “‘activities,” 
to use a distasteful modern word, would fill a 
book. All these activities have place. All are 
typical and characteristic, some much more 
rightly so than others. But none of them is 
primary. None of them gives the true mean- 
ing of Episcopacy. 

What then are Bishops for? Why, Bishops 
are set in the Church to do what St. Paul says 
he gave his life in doing: to declare the whole 
counsel of God, and to declare it without 
shrinking. 

Again, note carefully that the Bishops are 
to do this, not for themselves, but for the 


THE WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD 105 


Church. It is the whole Church: not any 
part of it, nor group in it: not even the whole 
House of Bishops: it is the whole body which 
has the mission, the duty, the responsibility. 
The truth and grace of Jesus Christ is a cor- 
porate possession. The Church is His repre- 
sentative, His agent, His trustee. The whole 
Church has the whole counsel to declare. But 
in declaring it, the Bishops are chief ministers 
or organs. ‘They chiefly do it for the Church. 
The Church chiefly does it through them. 
The Church and its ministers: the body and 
its organs. Let me dwell on the relationship. 
The organs of the human body: its eyes and 
ears for instance: belong wholly to the body. 
They have no life nor power of their own. Cut 
off from the body, they become quite dead and 
useless. It is the body which has the gifts of 
seeing and of hearing. It is the body which 
sees through eyes and hears through ears. 
Yet the body needs its organs. It cannot do 
without them. It cannot do anything without 
them. Of what use to the body are the gifts 
of sight and hearing unless the body has eyes 
and ears to see and hear with? Nor can the 
body get a second pair of eyes or ears if the 


106 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


first pair should fail. Indeed some of the 
body’s organs, ministers and servants though 
they be, are so vitally essential to the body 
that when they go, the body’s very life goes 
with them. It is a paradox: this absolute 
dependence of the organs on the body and of 
the body on its organs. Yet it is a paradox 
of daily life: the most familiar fact of our 
existence. It is this paradox which finds its 
perfect illustration in the relationship between 
the Church and its official ministers. 

**O priest, what art thou? 

Thou art nothing, and yet everything. 

Thou didst not make thyself, because thou art from nothing: 
Thou are not for thyself, because all that thou doest is for God: 
Thy life is not thine own, because thou art given to the Church 


as bondservant of all: 
Thou art not thine own self, because thou art the minister of 


God. 
What art thou, then? Nothing, yet everything, O priest.” * 


If that be true of Priests, it is yet more true 
of Bishops. For Bishops are the chief minis- 
ters. Therefore the principle, or truth, of 
ministry is chiefly seen in them: comes in them 
most clearly to the light. 

Let me here speak by parable. The men 


* A free translation from the Latin. 


THE WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD 107 


in charge of the reservoir which supplies a 
town with water are often out of sight and 
out of mind. Each member of each household 
in the town draws what he needs, for washing 
and for drinking. And perhaps, having in 
view the blessings which the water brings, in 
its sufficient and secure supply, he thanks the 
God Who gives it and those who have brought 
it to his home 

Yet all the time, from day to day, those men, 
up in the hills, intent on securing the springs 
and sources: on watching the retaining walls: 
on purging out all alien matter: it is they who 
are chief servants both of the God Who gives, 
and of the multitude who use the water. Such 
are the Bishops. Nothing, yet everything. 

How have the Bishops filled their office, and 
fulfilled their work? There was one traitor 
among the twelve Apostles. There have been 
others like him in the long course of the inter- 
vening centuries. How should there not have 
been? But the Church’s reservoir 7s full: its 
walls are strong: its water pure. The hum- 
blest and the youngest member of the Church 
has offered to him, every power and every 
privilege which was given to the Church at 


108 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


Pentecost. The whole counsel of God: the 
fullness of the grace and truth of Jesus Christ, 
is with us still. | 

And the Bishops of the Church have done 
it: -or more truly, the Church has done it 
through the Bishops. Thank God, then, for 
the Bishops, yes, but, even more, pray for 
them continually. They need your prayers. 
Even St. Paul admits he felt the strain. He 
acknowledges a tendency to shrink even while 
he shrank not. I think every Bishop must be 
personally grateful to the Apostle, not only for 
what he said, but for the precise way in which 
he said it. I think every Bishop knows some- 
thing at least of what the Apostle had in mind. 
Even St. Paul admits he felt like shrinking. 
Yet he shrank not. Please God we shall not 
shrink. 


Ly. 


My brother, here in Vermont there is noble 
Episcopal traditions. The Bishops of this 
Diocese have not shrunk from declaring the 
whole faith of the Church, the whole catholic 
Gospel of our Blessed Lord. And the Church 
in this country has become accustomed to look 


THE WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD 109 


to Vermont for the true interpretation of a 
Bishop’s office. 

Of the present Bishop, to whom you will now 
become Coadjutor, this is not the time or 
place to speak. Yet I cannot refrain from 
saying this: that my own Episcopate owes to 
him chiefly whatever it has had of true ideals, 
of loyalty and hope and courage. And there 
are many among the other Bishops and clergy 
_ of the Church who are daily giving thanks for 
his teaching and the example of his life. You 
are fortunate and blessed to have him as your 
spiritual guide and master as you take up 
your work. 

Nor to yourself need I say much. I know 
your humble devotion to our Lord and to His 
Church: your pastoral instinct: your power 
of human touch and sympathy: your patience 
and good temper in difficulty and adversity: 
your readiness for sacrifice. These are to be 
your offering. They are quite insufficient in 
themselves, as you so keenly realize. But 
after our Lord has taken what you bring, and 
touched it, and transformed it, He will suffice 
you. He will enable you to bring forth fruit 
which shall abide. 


110 THINK OUT YOUR FAITH 


May God by His Holy Spirit guard, guide 
and govern you. May He give you courage, 
wisdom, faith and zeal to fulfill His purpose 
and to do His will, to His own greater glory 
and the edification of His Church. 






































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